Beyond the Mist
by Bella Joy
Summary: Ameyuri Ringo, feared member of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist, was meant to die. To pass away quietly from disease at a young age. Here, she refuses. Her story won't end that easily. There's so much left to see, so much left to do, life to find beyond Kiri, and this illness won't stop her. Not yet.
1. PROLOGUE

The Mist was cold and heavy. Not an ideal place to be, but it was home, for now.

She'd heard of places in the world that didn't operate on the same principles as Kiri. Greener places. Lighter places. Most places were said to be like that, actually. Even the harder of the great villages, while tough in their methods, could never match Kirigakure in its sheer...brutality. There was no place for weakness in the cover of the mist, and there were few options to pick from. You could hide, and hope you hide well. Or you could fight. Armed with a stolen tanto and facing down another child, stale food scraps gripped tightly in his hands as he slowly edged away from her, Ameyuri Ringo made her choice.

There was no talk; it was clear what each child wanted. The eerie silence of the alleyway was only broken by the soft and methodical taps of bare feet crossing wet earth in the dark. Her opponent's gaze never left her. He was being careful, wary of her. Her weapon was held stiff in her hand, the blade facing away from her as she tried to think.

'If he just gave them over, this would be so much easier.'

It would be hard not to miss that such an option might not be possible; the boy's ribs were clear against his skin, and those eyes that stared at her in a mixture of fear and rage were sunken with malnourishment. But the thought remained. She had to eat as well, and she was the one with the weapon, looted from the body of a dying genin, bloody and stuck along the edge of a dank and muddy river.

She stood with these thoughts in mind, that she was the one in control, with the means to live through this. That the boy was starving, and though Ringo was hungry, she would live. That the boy had what he needed, and what she wanted. That he was on the wrong end of the alley. That he was trapped. And that he was trapped with _her_.

The silence was cracked by splashes as she ran, breaking the still puddles that littered the dirt to reach her target. Her tanto raised above her, and slashed down, cutting the boy across the arm as he turned his body to protect the food. A scream of pain erupted from the child as blood spilled from the gash. He ducked, and tried to run past her, but she managed to knock him back against the alley wall with her shoulder. The lines were clear. Two children, two plans. Attack, and run. Predator, and prey.

She had nothing to fear. This boy was no threat to her. This was her win to take, and she would take it without hesitation. She would _live_.

The boy's breath caught as his back struck the stone wall, and panic replaced the determined wariness he'd held till now. Ringo brought the blade of her tanto back around as he pushed off the wall in a desperate attempt to get around her, and fall back into the thick cover of the ever encroaching mists. He stumbled over her, and though she caught him in the leg, his sudden move got him to the right side of the alley. His steps were broken, shambling, but the threat of death was a strong motivator to ignore the pain. Ringo knew that well. He was fleeing for his life, and he had his chance to get away.

A sudden anger swept through her as she gave chase down the alley. Anger that she let him get into this position. Anger that he _wasn't dead yet_. And besides that anger was the all familiar pang of fear.

"No!"

Ringo wouldn't let him get away. Not with her food. Not when she was so close to getting them. Her steps were fueled by the same consuming rush the boy himself had. She would not die. Not in this village. Not this early. Not from hunger. _Not yet_.

She leapt and caught across his back, using the force of her jump to drag the boy downward, the two falling against the damp earth they fought on with her on top. Growls and short, broken shouts of rage and fear filled the air as she held him in place, raised her sword, and brought it down hard into his stomach, sinking as deep as it could go.

His scream pierced their miniature battlefield, but could never hope to break through the mist he was so close to reaching. Ringo slid out the tanto from his gut, now covered in blood. And she brought it down again into him with a sickening squish. He screamed louder. She brought her sword out, up, and down again. He was still screaming, so she stabbed again. Quickly, his screams started to quiet, and mixed with crying. Even quicker his crying turned to a mess of choking, as blood seeped up his throat, and was coughed out.

Ringo sat atop him panting for air, both hands gripping the handle of her blade until her knuckles turned white. The backs of her hands were splashed with blood, and she could only look down at the child's still face, blood flowing from his stomach and chest and slowly escaping his mouth. Her head turned to the side. Even in death, he still held the food he'd found. Her food, now. She coughed, and wiped against her face, where blood was speckled against her skin from his sputtering.

She leant over, grabbed the scraps, and stood.

Only one walked away with the means to survive. A path was chosen, and with a dull burn in her chest, Ameyuri Ringo stepped back into the mist's cover. Having a weapon, while being a large advantage, could still only do so much for her. She had to practice, and for now, meal secured, she had time to do so. After all, the first kill is rarely the last, especially in this damn village.

Ringo was in no position to stop now.

* * *

AN: Because if anyone needs a bit more love, it's Ringo.  
Sharp toothed badass swordswoman? Yes.  
This is happening.

Buckle up y'all, cause this is gonna be a long one!  
This story's going to update weekly, a new chapter every Friday evening.  
Hope you're all looking forward to chapter one, because I'm looking forward to posting.

Big thanks to Luxememoria, who you can find on twitter with the handle luxememoria, and on tumblr with the same name.  
Provided some amazing commissioned work that is the cover art for this story, and an incredible artist.

See you all next week!  
Enjoy.


	2. The Early Years: Part 1

No matter how many days are spent waiting in silence, and no matter how much it feels like the nights drag on, time moves fast. Years pass, and before she knows it Ringo is no longer a child. Young? Sure. But, she's already passed the age of graduating genin.

Time's done enough for the young girl, at the very least enough to get her this far. It's taken a lot of work, and a lot of blood and theft, but Ringo is managing well. She's claimed a second sword, longer than her first tanto. More finely made as well. And this time, the sword was looted from her _own_ kill.

One thing she's discovered in the time since she first claimed a blade is that she has quite the aptitude for them. The swords have always stuck by her, granting her their protection. They sing in her hands. They're part of her. To quote the (damn preachy) opponent she got her second weapon from, the swords were "an extension to oneself, that become part of you on every level." Yeah...it was kinda like that? She kept her swords tied to her, one to each hip, tucked securely into her sash. They quite literally never left her side. And she's _good_. Good enough to put her own sword through that guy's gut and steal his. Who is she not to roll with it?

And as strange as it was, as much as her life has been on the line with every battle, fighting with her weaponry was...fun, to a degree. Especially when she knew she was going to win! Slowly hunting them down, cut by cut, provoking them, until they knew, they just _knew_ that they _couldn't get away_...hah! It let her know that she was finally moving past "an urchin" or "one of those dirty kids". Now, if someone had the wise idea to attack her, for food, for money, or just for the hell of it, she could cut them up and come out all the better for it.

It was a rush. That's what fighting was. And when somebody tries to cause her harm? Harming them right back is just about the most _damn fun thing_ she can do in Kiri. And having fun in Kiri is by no means an easy thing to do. But the knowledge that she can't be knocked around, can't just be killed off without one hell of a fight...that was good. Encouraging even, to keep getting better.

And Mist itself...well. Mist isn't...terrible. It's not good, not by any means, and she'd be damned if she didn't see the rest of the world before kicking the bucket. But it was home. People lived, people starved, people died choking on blood. She got used to it.

And it was that getting used to it that let her get to where she is now. It was what would let her go even further. She wasn't stupid; she was still weak in the grand scheme of things. You don't survive a career as a shinobi in Kiri without either being messed up in the head, strong enough to kick the ass of anyone you come across, or by having a severe lack of morals. Maybe more than one of them. Maybe all three. Most grown ninja in this village could still knock her senseless. As much as she could hold her own, she wasn't _great_. Not yet.

But she would be! A reputation is a powerful thing, and power is safety in a place like this. Power means you can do whatever the hell you want, have whatever fun you deem worth having...That's something to take interest in. And Ringo was very, very interested.

Now, if she's gonna have some fun with her life, she needed to be strong. To be a _legend_. The thing was, that was easier said than done. Many people strive for such a thing, and most get cut down in the process. It was actually...quite a dilemma. To be strong, to be safe, to be killed and swatted aside like you're nothing... They're all potential outcomes of the path she was choosing. But at the same time, sitting around dirty streets stealing food? As safe as it was for where she was at, it wasn't appealing. And there was always the chance, the off chance, that someone would find her. Someone beyond her level, someone that wouldn't have any mercy for her.

So she made the choice to break through the standard. Besides, what good even is living if it's spent covered in mud and garbage? No, she'd much rather put the work in now and have a life where she could be free. Free of worry. Free of the damn paranoia that something too tough for her could come out of the fog and end her right there. Free to do what she pleases.

That drive is what pushed her to the doors of a small bar frequented by some of the higher ranking shinobi to spy on ninja way beyond her level. It was dangerous to do, anyone in this bar could end her in a heartbeat, but if she didn't draw attention to herself and tried not to look suspicious, nobody would bat an eye at her. Kids in bars weren't the rarest thing in a country that was known for its children killing each other in the streets.

Just show up, order a drink, sip slowly, and keep to yourself. An easy enough plan, and more than worth it if it had the potential to turn up some good info.

And it was true, it wasn't hard at all. Nobody except the bartender even looked to the door when she walked in, and she took in the place as she silently moved towards the server. It was dark. Go figure. The tables were all along the walls, nobody wants to sit in the middle of a whole group of shifty looking killers. Musty, hot, and generally unpleasant...

'Just the kind've place people wanna come to forget their lives are just as awful as the village they live in.'

Ringo nearly snickered to herself, but managed to keep her face plain, 'draw absolutely no attention' repeating in her head. She quickly reached the bartender, and he looked down at her expectantly, waiting for her order.

"Sake?"

He blew out a soft breath, and wordlessly turned to get her drink. Taking the opportunity to look around once more, Ringo's eyes quickly passed over the tables around the bar. The people here looked...dangerous. From head to toe. That's to be expected, but it's still an unnerving thought just how strong every one of these people could be. Official shinobi...a couple kunoichi...people likely off the books...And genin. Looking at it like this, it's hard not to see the results of what she was striving for. The bar had two main groups of clients; fresh kids straight out of Kiri's academy, and Jonin. Career shinobi. People who don't live that long without cutting down half the competition. The middle ground between the two groups is nonexistent in a place like this. They either die or kill enough of each other to get promoted.

A thunk from the bar's counter breaks Ringo from her thoughts, and her attention snaps back to the large man now holding tight to a small bottle of sake, with a cup right next to it. She takes out just enough to cover the drink and places it neatly near him. His attention drops off of her as he takes the money, and she collects her drink and makes her way to an empty table in front of some of the younger customers. They probably don't know as much as some of the others here, but she doesn't want to draw the attention of some of the harder customers just yet. She's not good enough to risk that. Besides, maybe she'd get lucky.

'And if not…'

Well, she'd stolen sake before. The stuff's not bad. It's unlikely she'd hear something the first time she comes here anyways, so why not make it a thing? She'd lament the loss of money that would be dropped on drinks, but she'd still manage ok. She needed something to do between practice and profession anyways. Swords and stealing for a living could only take up so much time, and when lives weren't being claimed, Kiri was pretty damn boring. Most of people's time was spent sitting around, so she might as well sit somewhere interesting.

Unfortunately, she was right. The genin she sat in front of didn't say a single word about anything important. Seems like they just came here to forget about how terrible things were. Who knows. The only things they said were about the academy and, interesting as some of the gossip was, it wasn't very helpful. It did at least let her in on a few funny stories, though. She'll call the experience worth it, and come back again in a few days.

It was a process she did end up repeating quite a bit. Time passed, a couple years went by, and she became a regular. Just another face that you could find there sometimes. Over time, she did end up hearing quite a few things. Some talk about merchant groups, gossip about foreign nations, what missing nin were doing what, and talk of what's going on with the higher ups in Kiri. Not a bad haul of information really, but Ringo was getting impatient. She didn't wanna die of old age before she found her way up.

Lucky for her, today was turning out to be a good one in terms of 'overhearing' things. The moment she walked in she could tell it would be, because one thought was shot through her head the instant she arrived.

' _Damn_ that guy's big!'

Followed immediately by another striking observation;

' _Damn_ he looks a _fish!_ '

It would be hard not to notice the giant man squeezed into a booth with another ninja (A friend? His student?), giant sword wrapped in bandages and tucked neatly across his back. Somehow his companion was...even more fishlike than him. Kiri is bizarre. The big man was giggling to himself over what looked like...three, four...five bottles of sake. You might assume he was sharing with his partner, but the other guy honestly didn't look interested in the drinks at all. He was just smirking to himself while the larger man chatted on. It wasn't hard to pick where to listen in on tonight.

Ringo sat down two tables behind the big guy's companion, her back to him (she was getting more and more sure he's his student. They had a pretty obvious theme going on.). Sure, the larger man himself might see her, but not only was he obviously drunk and getting drunker, he seemed the type to not care even if he did notice her listening in. He had his own world. And to be honest, she didn't want to think about what might happen if a giant drunk man with a giant sword got startled by someone behind him.

"Bahhh! Fools don't know...what they're missin'..."

The man is grumbling about something. His student seems...amused? He's chuckling.

"I'm sure they'll be claimed soon, shishou."

He _is_ the guy's student. Score.

"Better be! D'..on't they know what a… an honor it is!? People would kill for them! Bahaha! Bahahaha!"

While it's not a surprise that people in Kiri would kill for something, the conversation is definitely living up to the interest. And the man's certainly lenient with what information he lets slip...It almost seems like, when he thinks nobody is paying attention, he just speaks louder. He's...trying get this info around? That's concerning. A big sign of a trap. But that doesn't seem all there is to it. He's being _too_ forthcoming with this story, even for a drunkard, and his student doesn't notice anything wrong with this.

What follows in the next few minutes of his rambling is mostly the same rant of "Fools! The fools! Bahah!", but a few more key words are picked up. "Swords" is the first one to really grab her. She likes swords, and from her experience swords tend to like her too. Something about...valuable. People would kill for the swords? "Kiba." That's what he just called them. She stiffens as she recognizes the name, and for a second she swears she feels the man's leer burning into the back of her head. And if she had any doubts, she can practically _hear_ the grin in his voice when he speaks again.

"Any swordsmen worth his weight...would probably kill for the chance to join."

Join...'The Kiba.' The thunderblades. Those twin blades are famous in Kiri, and they're famous for a damn good reason. They're a pair of swords used by members of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist. The strongest group in all of the nation, each member a living legend, that serve the Mizukage directly.

'...Oh. The sword across his back.'

If she attended the academy, she had no doubt her teachers would hunt her down and kill her themselves for not recognizing him sooner. Fuguki Suikazan. A massive and dangerous man of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen. Fish face was a damn celebrity, renowned for his strength and service to the village.

'The Seven Ninja Swordsmen...And the thunderblades...he said they weren't claimed?'

This was a story worth the risk. This was _it_. Anticipation rose through her, and she was coiled as if ready to jump into action at any moment. This was what she'd been waiting _years_ to hear about. If she could get her hands on the famed thunder blades...she was already skilled with swords. She took to them like a fish to...well, to swords, if Fuguki and his student were anything to judge by. She could do this. Finally she had a plan! Not a thought about where it might go, or what something could lead to. No, she had a goal. Nobody, absolutely nobody in their right mind would _ever_ approach a member of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, much less want to fight them.

'...I could do this…'

That thought rung loud in her head as she took in all the information from Fuguki's story. The Kiba were lost. Unclaimed. There's an opening in the most famed group in Mist. She was talented. She was experienced. Swords were a part of her, and had been since she was a kid. She was _good_. She could _do this_.

She sat stiff, and a quick pinch of pain shot through her stomach, but she chalked it up to Fuguki's attention, which she now had absolutely no doubt was set directly on her as he chuckled deeply. His student spoke up, still sounding just a little amused. He probably noticed her too. Her plan of being inconspicuous certainly hadn't panned out this time, but then, if these people were as good as rumors say, there wouldn't be much hope in hiding from them.

"Hey, shishou...where did you think they could be again?"

The man chuckled again, and let out a sigh as he thought.

"Mmm...Probably still with that bastards body at the bottom of a river somewhere. That no good-"

Ringo tuned out the man's complaints about somebody who was apparently one hell of a bastard. With a body...river...that's a starting point.

'Jeez...is it just my destiny to take swords from river corpses?'

But, bottom of a river...that means sunk, which means it has a good bit of water in it. Not the muddy, sticky, shitty creeks that liter Mist everywhere you look. There were still a good number of large rivers in Mist country though, so it doesn't narrow it down enough.

'It wouldn't be somewhere right around here...no, not a river that's in the village. People would've noticed whatever the hell happened to the guy in possession of the Kiba. Finding them would take no time at all.'

So outside the village...It would have to be something with a lot of catches, if the river was fast moving. Either that or he was literally stuck to the bottom of it through...some method. That or a river that was deep and slow. Most of the rivers in nearby Kirigakure were cleared of rocks; a lot of them were used for travel. So, a more still one. That gives her a good place to start searching. There were only a few rivers like that surrounding the center of Kiri, and something told her this man Fuguki definitely wanted the swords to be found. If they weren't nearby, she'd fan out the search along the larger waterways of Mist country. But she had to hurry. Swords like that were valuable, if not for use then for selling.

And Ringo wasn't in this for the money, no. She was most definitely in this to use them. She needed those swords. So she had to start _now!_

She stood abruptly, sake forgotten. She had all the information needed to find the Kiba. As she passed by him, though she kept her head down and turned, it was more than clear that Fuguki, largest of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, was smiling at her like a maniac.

She paid it as little mind as possible. This was her chance, and she was going to take it. She didn't think it was a trap, even if she couldn't be sure. This was the opportunity of a lifetime, and damn her straight to hell if she passes it up.

Get the Kiba. Master the Kiba. Land a comfortable seat in the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, and do whatever the hell she wanted without fear. She had a plan.

And as she walked out of the bar into the cool fog of night, she was displeased to note that the stinging in her abdomen had yet to go away.

* * *

AN: So y'all have a good week?  
The first arc, The Early Years, is basically going to go through Ringo's life until she's an adult and end with the meat of the story really beginning.  
This chapter also marks the end of the majority of the setup, so I'm honestly excited for part 2 of this. A lot of very fun to write moments in it, hope you can enjoy it too.  
See ya next week, yo!

SakuraxHinata - I didn't say it before, but great name. Thanks again for the writing review, was great to read and helps improve the story. bless your heart n' all that jazz

icestar0 - Ameyuri _definitely_ needs more love! Sorry this chapter didn't have too much action to it, but hey. You can look forward to a good bit of that next week ;D  
Hope you like it.


	3. The Early Years: Part 2

Traversing through mud and slurry water looking for a dead body was a terrible experience. Ringo was learning fast that she didn't have anywhere near the level of patience she thought she did. Then again...maybe it was the excitement of the situation. The need to find these things first. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind she wasn't the only one looking, especially if Fuguki's rambling at the bar wasn't the only time he went around blabbing about the situation.

The stress was just getting to her. Never before had she been this close to what she'd been searching for, and knowing that at any moment it could be snatched away by some poser who just wanted something shiny to stick people with was getting more and more _infuriating_. If she didn't find them first, what would that mean? What would it mean for her plan? For her?

She'd kill them for it. Even if someone got to the Kiba first, she'd end them at the first possible moment. These belonged to her. They weren't in her possession yet, but they were _hers_.

That said, the search was just as boring and terrible as it was exciting. The excitement just came from the idea of what would come of it. The actual searching? Awful. Still water always had a habit of stinking the worst, and the trash thrown into it didn't wash away nearly as quickly as it did in fast flowing waterways. And the worst...the worst was when Ringo couldn't see the bottom of the water from the surface. Because it meant she had to search by hand.

'This is the most disgusting thing I've ever done...'

Yeah. For her own sanity, the Thunderblades better be nearby. She'd been looking long enough.

She hadn't slept very much over the past few days, and her search had expanded far past the boundaries of the safer parts of Kiri.

At least her assumption that this wasn't a trap by Fuguki himself was reasonably confirmed. She was exhausted, angry, and more than a bit worried to top it off. And she smelled like crap. And these clothes would absolutely never recover from this experience.

If somebody wanted to ambush her, it probably wouldn't be very hard.

That was...still a worrying thought. She probably wouldn't be the only one planning to murder the hell out of whoever found the Kiba, and her paranoia was probably starting to show. Every sound, every splash of water, every time she was sure she heard someone stepping through mud, she whipped around in an instant, swords drawn only to be met by nothing.

She was willing to throw herself into the nastiest parts of Kiri, starve herself searching, and kill whoever she had to in order to claim these swords. They would be hers. Anybody with the bright idea to attack her now? They'd get what they deserve. She was more than pissed enough to make it happen no matter who they were right now.

But regardless of her readiness for it, the strangeness of the situation was that she _hadn't_ been attacked yet. As of now, it was just an anxiety driven higher and higher with every minute passed in solitude in the middle of absolutely disgusting riverbeds.

"Dammit, where the hell are these things!?"

She'd searched so much the past few nights. Every river that fit the idea she could think of, every stretch of foul smelling muck. She'd even found a couple bits of remains, but nothing full, and nothing with anything good on them.

Ringo leapt back out of the particularly nasty water channel she'd been looking through, taking a deep breath. She had to think now. She needed to take a moment to calm down.

Was she wrong about them being in still water? Could they have washed away? In another river? ...Was Fuguki just spreading the story to torment anybody stupid enough to believe him? He didn't seem to care the most about other people. It was...It was possible that he made it up just to get naive swordsmen looking for their big chance to wade through crap for days on end.

Well. Damn. A bizarre mixture of adrenaline and an overwhelming tiredness flowed through Ringo as she sat on the bank of the freshly searched river.

'...I'll keep searching for tonight. I need these things. They need to be out here.'

Yeah...she'd keep searching, and if she hadn't found them by morning, she'd return to Kiri and get some food and rest. Once she recovered a bit, she'd come back out with a bit less urgency. Staying out in the cold and muck for so long was taking a nasty toll on her health, anyways. Her cough was coming back, and she wasn't stupid enough to search until she died out here.

Having caught her breath and being more rested than she had been for days, Ringo stood, ready to continue her search once more. Maybe, if she was lucky, she'd find the things before the sun rose.

With a disquieting feeling that she was being watched creeping across her back, she started up the river once again.

* * *

(Fuguki)

Fuguki Suikazan was a man in his own world. He took his service to Kiri very seriously, but in the end, it was his own whims that led him to do what he did outside of missions. Over the years he'd learned to trust his gut. It'd been very good to him thus far, so there was no reason to doubt it when it came to his newest find.

Sitting silently in a tree overlooking one of the many rivers in Kiri, shrouded by the ever present mist, Fuguki eyed his prize. A young sword wielding fighter, currently waist deep in muck, trying to find the Kiba. It hadn't been sheer coincidence when he first found them; he had actually been watching someone else at the time. Another kenjutsu hopeful. A very annoying man, but he knew what was important about the practice and he wasn't terrible. Fuguki had decided to watch the man for a bit, see if there was actually anything to him that would make him a decent subordinate.

As it turns out, there wasn't. Not really. But the time had been _oh_ so worth it at this point. His watch had somehow ended up in a confrontation with a scruffy urchin teenager, armed with a small tanto. He rattled off a full length speech that Fuguki was sure he had written beforehand about the virtues of swordsmanship and a swords relation to its wielder, and before he had even finished talking, the urchin's blade was stuck right in his gut.

The fight was quick. With a first strike that brutal, it would be a rare case not to be. The man put up a good defence for having a hole in his belly, Fuguki wasn't kidding when he said that he was actually somewhat skilled. Just not skilled enough, and a bit too in his own head. And watching the kid fight, it was clear he wouldn't have too much trouble finishing what that blow had started. The kid was fast, certainly faster than most, and absolutely wild with the way the blade swung. Quite a feat for someone he was fairly certain wasn't even a proper ninja.

The kid's movements were fluid and quick, the blade they held never stilling in their flurry of strikes. By the time the final cut was landed on the man, Fuguki's gaze was entirely directed at the other combatant anyways.

The sword sang in the kid's hand, like it was made to be holding weapons. And once the man fell dead, what did they do? Smirked, picked his pockets, and stole his own weapon.

"Bahah! The boys got spunk!"

Slapping his hand against his knee and laughing to himself from his perch, Fuguki thought back through what he knew of the child in question.

It wasn't hard to learn more about the kid. Mist was always watching. No matter where you went in it, you could never truly hide. Not from a man like Fuguki.

Urchin. No public name worth knowing. Skilled enough with a blade. One of the kids you wanna stay from. And, from what he heard, he had quite the mean streak going on. Not bad for a kid who didn't have anything to 'em.

But what spoke more than anything was the way he moved when he fought. Not only did his fighting skills speak of natural talent, they showed experience. Real experience. The kind you only get from fighting others to the end with all your being. Normally that's the kind of thing you get in war or service as a shinobi, but streetfighting...well, it's certainly worked ok until this point. Sure, it left him pretty damn rough around the edges, but the skill was there, and the rest could be beaten into him. So far, with however many years of that, the boy was coming out on top, and getting better and better with every passing day. Quick learner, likely practiced on his own time. That was good.

Not a diamond in the rough, but certainly a jewel. Unpolished and uncut, but a gem that could be molded into something worthwhile. Fuguki decided to keep tabs on the kid. If he lived long enough, he could easily become someone worth watching.

Perhaps unfortunately, perhaps luckily, Fuguki ended up needing a fall back like that. The man who'd taken up the Thunderblades, a slimy fellow that was too haughty for his own health, turned out to be nothing but a rat. A traitor, giving out information on the roster of The Seven Ninja Swordsmen to enemies of Mist. The man was good, but not worth keeping at that point. When he'd learned about it, Fuguki was so pissed that he killed the man himself; drained him dry with Samehada and dumped the body, swords and all, in the most disgusting, infested river he knew of.

So, he took it on himself to start searching for a replacement. Someone with talent, someone with the right stuff he was looking for. And one of the people that stuck to his thoughts was the young boy who stuck through his charge a while back. Yes, depending on how he'd progressed so far, he might be worth something now! And if he wasn't...ah well. He'd see, and if the kid turned out to be nothing special...

Well. Then he'd just think of someone else.

Finding him again was easy, especially once Fuguki learned that he'd become a regular at some seedy bar in Kiri proper. He took his student with him and sat out at the bar for a while, waiting. The sake was terrible, Fuguki couldn't understand for the life of him why people liked it here. Still, 4 or 5 bottles did the trick, and by the time he was starting to get a little bored, the boy he was searching for had walked in, eyes directly on him.

He looked away quickly, but Fuguki was more than a little amused. Perhaps the obscene amount of alcohol played into that a bit, but he didn't really care at the moment. The boy'd grown; perhaps a bit shorter and a little softer looking than he would've expected, but he was growing well still. He looked well fed and was fairly filled out with lean muscle, which said skill. You don't eat right without taking the means to do so in the worse parts of Mist. His tanto on one hip, the longer sword he'd taken on the other, tucked securely into his obi. He kept his hands by his sides, ready to draw at any moment if he had to. It seemed that he wasn't the kind the just threaten with the swords; he liked to use them.

Oh, Fuguki was starting to look forward to this.

Thus, it was to his delight that the boy sat a bit behind Kisame, back to the both of them, head down, focused on his drink. If Fuguki hadn't been searching for him specifically, he could pass the kid up entirely with the way he kept to himself.

But he was young. Young, and inexperienced in any art that wasn't fighting it would seem. He wasn't anywhere near Fuguki's level. No, not just yet, and likely not for a long while still. It was way too obvious that he was trying to avoid their notice. That fact was made even clearer by the way that, every time Fuguki giggled harshly to himself and settled his gaze right on the back of the kid's head, he would freeze like he could feel it.

It wouldn't be hard to peak the boy's interest if he was anything like Fuguki was searching for. A few choice words dropped in a loud enough manner, a couple small hints of whereabouts, and the kid was hooked. The way he stiffened when he recognized the name of the swords, and when he figured out just who he was listening to was more than just a little enjoyable. The kid debated to himself for a minute, then shot up, walking right past him to exit the bar.

After he was gone, Fuguki couldn't resist a proper laugh at how entertaining that had been. And then another at how _right_ he was. The kid wanted those swords, enough to say "stealth be damned" and walk right out.

Fuguki chuckled to himself. What an idiot that kid is. If this does end up working, he'd have to be taught quite a lot of basics. Still, he's off to find the prize. The first of the tests has been passed.

'Yes,' he thought to himself, as the boy in question stood and started trekking up the river once more, 'Yes, this has promise.'

* * *

(Ringo)

The night was dragging on. The sun would rise soon, and she didn't feel any closer to her goal. And she was, once again, waist deep in the most disgusting muck she'd ever seen. Who the hell lets things get this bad!? Why is her country so filthy!?

That was how it had been since she started her search, and it didn't feel any different now, no matter where she looked. Night had only an hour or so remaining before light would break. Honestly, at this point, she had essentially given up on finding the things before going back to Kiri proper to rest up, even though her body was still mechanically going through the motions of searching.

Which was why it was surprising when her hand, moving against the bottom of the river, felt something. Cloth? Cloth around something. Something...

"Oh fuck that's a body. Oh, fuck!"

Was this it? She hurriedly got a grip on the thing's clothes and hauled it up, dropping it down against the bank of the river. That's...

"That's disgusting."

The body was bloated, diseased, torn up in places, and peeling. By far the grossest encounter with death Ringo had ever had up to this point. But that wasn't important. She had to search it.

Holding her breath as she crept in closer to it, she started the process. Tied to anything? No. Hips, sash, not there, pants, no…

Metal. Something long and metal was pressed up against his chest on the inside of his robe. Tearing it open, she looked at the weapon stuck to the corpse's oozing skin.

It was iconic. It was what she was looking for. It was...just one of them.

She moved in a frenzy, peeling the sword away from the body and keeping it securely in hand as she searched the rest of the body, only to turn up nothing.

'The river.'

Ringo practically dove back in, a spray of wet filth splashing up around her as she frantically brushed against the bottom of the water where the body had been. She had this, she had them. It was almost anticlimactic, finally finding them, but she was too engrossed in the surge of joy that she was feeling to really care. Her fatigue was forgotten, washed away in the electrifying feeling of the blade in her hand. And all she had to do was find…

There it was. She pulled up the metal trapped in muck, and took in the sight as it broke the surface of the water.

This was real. The Kiba were hers.

She scrambled up the river's edge, a sword in each hand, a few quiet bouts of laughter escaping her as her emotions swam in so many directions.

She relaxed and tightened her grip on the handle's of the swords she was so desperate for. They were larger than her other swords, but not giant. Not like Fuguki's. Twin blades, bits of metal stuck out along a couple points of the edge for shredding.

Ringo got into a practice stance and swung forward experimentally. They were lighter than she expected. They were fast. She felt so powerful just holding them.

'Thunderblades…'

These swords were said to grant access to lightning techniques.

'...I like lightning.'

Lightning was good. Strong. Bright, energetic, and absolutely devastating. And right now, she could practically feel herself swimming in anticipation to try it out. Though...she'd never utilized chakra in something like this before. She'd learned enough from spying on academy students to know what it was and how to feel it, but she'd never really _used_ it for anything. Now, however, it just felt right. Like she had to in order to get some of this excitement burned out of her.

Grabbing hold of her chakra to move it around was difficult, and ordinarily it would be horribly frustrating, but the time it took to get it right passed in what seemed like the blink of an eye.

Finally pushing a chunk of her chakra into the blades, she tried what she knew to make something happen. And, a bit to her surprise and much to her mirth, the swords sparked. Bits of electricity jumped up and down the Kiba, and she felt the strength in these weapons resonate within her as sparks from the blades leapt across her wrists, lightly stinging against her skin.

This felt so damn good. So right. These things were MADE for her!

All of her exhaustion was gone, replaced with a giddy feeling of excitement. This was a damn dream come true!

The weapons cut through the air quickly with a couple more swings. A stab to follow through. She pushed her chakra back through the swords. And then...

A buzz. A buzz that was like music to her ears. Delicious sparking as electricity shot through the blades, arcing through the space the tip of her sword occupied.

She couldn't resist it; she laughed. She laughed quietly at first, and it escalated to full blown whooping and howling as she brought the swords back to her, jumping repeatedly in place. This was _IT!_ She could reach the height of legends with these things!

The weight of her previous swords still tucked against her waist drew her attention, and after a moment of consideration, she removed them, holding a set of swords by the blades in one hand each. Raising the hand that held her first weapons over the riverbank, she slowly released her grip, swords falling into the grime with a wet slap.

She wouldn't need them anymore. Now that she had these? Never again would she need anything else.

A smile was quickly spreading over her features once more as she reveled in how new, how remade she felt, and more laughter was beginning to rise up out of her. However, her joy was cut short when a deep voice cut through her celebration behind her.

"Behehaha! Finally got em' didja? Took ya long enough. Was startin' to think you'd just give up! And wouldn't that be a shame, huh?"

Fuguki. Her joy halted, mixing with a sudden dread. Several thoughts hammered through her. She was right, she was being watched. Was this a trap? Was he here to kill her? What should she do? Run? Talk? Listen? Attack? She was riding on more adrenaline than she'd ever had in her life, all it would take for her to attack would be him to point his sword in her direction. She couldn't hope to beat him, but the energy that filled her blood right now was a powerful thing, and she was feeling better than she ever had before. But Fuguki was just staring at her. Waiting for her to say something? What was he expecting? She settled on keeping this as still as possible, drawing out as much information as she could while being ready to lash out the moment he showed intent to attack.

"You followed me?"

The big man's grin was terrifying. Sharp teeth weren't all that uncommon in Kiri, she had them herself, but on a man that enormous it made for quite the scary visage.

"Course I did! I'm not lettin' just anybody get their hands on those."

He pointed a giant finger right at the Kiba. Once more, her thoughts were in disarray. What did that mean? He knew where the swords were, so what did he want from her? Was this more about her, or the swords? What was happening? What did he want? That was as good a question as she could ask right now.

"What do you want?"

He chortled. That was disturbing.

"Didn't I just say? Not just anybody gets their hands on those things. You know what they are, yea?"

"...Yeah."

"And you know who they belong to, yea?"

She instantly curled in on herself defensively, swords pulled in front of her. Her eyes narrowed, and a sneer plastered itself onto her face before she could stop herself.

"They belong to ME!"

For a tense second, the riverside was filled with nothing but silence. To her utter relief, Fuguki laughed again, louder this time, hands on his stomach. Still, her defensive stance didn't relax. Not for a moment.

"BAHAhah! They could, kid! They might, even! But beyond that, they belong to something bigger."

He was starting to talk slower, every word drawn out and emphasized.

"I'm sure you know, the Seven Ninja Swordsmen." He grinned, eyes trained on her. "Is that you?"

Was it? It could be. She certainly knew that she wanted the spot. It was her ticket to the life she wanted. To life itself. Fuguki, for his part, didn't seem to care much about what exactly she was thinking. He just laughed on, watching her.

"We need to test that, don't ya think? After all, I said it before." he chuckled out, a hand reaching over his shoulder as he grabbed the handle of Samehada, the bandage wrapped sword, "I won't let just anybody get those."

'He's going to attack' was the thought screaming through her mind as he brought the giant sword in front of him, held firmly with one hand. She was coiled tighter than she ever had been before. Never in her life had she ever been in this much danger. He spoke again.

"I like the look of you, boy!"

There was something wrong with that sentence.

"You've got a call for the swords, but I need feel it for myself now!"

She didn't look like a boy. Not at all. Was this guy stupid? Was he trying to piss her off? Was this part of his 'test'?

Maybe she should grow her hair out more.

Of course, that thought was only paid any mind to in passing. It's difficult not to direct the vast majority of your attention on a giant with a sword the size you are, claiming he's going to 'test' you and your handling of weapons. The man could kill her in a heartbeat, so somewhere in her mind she knew he wasn't looking to just end her, but her thoughts were obscenely clouded. She would still be fighting for her life with this 'test'. She most definitely did not want to die here. Not now. Dying with these swords finally in her hands almost seemed a worse fate than dying trying to get them.

More and more fear had been slipping into her as she tried to piece together her thoughts. This man could kill her, but would he? That sword of his, Samehada, can suck the life out of her in a single second, but she wouldn't let it. Just as quickly as the fear had seeped into her, it was being battered down by anger. She was terrified, so she'd get furious. She didn't want to die. So she had to fight. Who was this man to take her life now? She knew logically she couldn't beat him, but he wasn't giving her any other option. There was no running. Not from a member of the Seven Swordsmen. The only thing she could do was fight, and she'd fight hard.

The Kiba hummed and crackled with electricity, filling the silence between them. She would get out of here. She would kill this man if she had to. And now she was ready.

As quick as the lightning in her blades, Ringo launched herself forward, cutting the distance between her and Fuguki and swiftly moving into a flurry of swipes, each aimed to slice through something important enough to bleed him out sooner or later. Her stance was low, trying to remain as close to the ground as possible as she searched for a cut. Fuguki seemed...amused. He was laughing. That could be bad. At the moment, it certainly seemed so; not even a single swing came close to connecting with his skin, each attack blocked by the massive barrier that was Samehada. He likely wasn't the quickest in the world, but it seemed he didn't have to be, twisting the massive sword just as much as he had to. He didn't move besides that. This was utterly ineffective.

'The lightning!'

He knew more about these swords than any other, so he knew what they offered, but it was worth a shot to take him off guard and she was sure as hell going to make use of the power these things held. She quickly turned an attack that cut harmlessly across the bandages of Samehada back to a stab aimed at his arm. It wasn't quite close enough to reach, and the area wasn't anything vital, but that was what she was hoping she could count on, that he wouldn't even bother blocking. Her chakra flowed down her arm into the metal of her blade, and the already familiar chirps of electricity rung loud. Lightning crackled up from the handle and she shouted as it shot from the tip of the Kiba.

The energy shot at the man's arm, and...Samehada covered it. Damn it. The electricity that had been aimed at the man himself quickly swung around his sword, running across it and slowly dissipating as the energy was absorbed into the bandages. There was some weird crunching sound. Did it just...grow? Oh, kami, that was a terrible sight. Fuguki looked all too pleased with himself, placing the tip of Samehada on the ground against the cracked mud and resting his elbow on the hilt.

"Not gonna work, boy! Samehada here can abso-hey!"

Ringo cut off Fuguki's talk, flying into another series of strikes aimed primarily at the legs. She had to find somewhere he couldn't defend as easily. She didn't have time to listen to that speech of his, it was easy enough to figure out. The ever encroaching fog that crept around them was sliced apart by her attacks, and Fuguki seemed to be taken off guard. That was good. She just had to keep attacking; any advantage couldn't afford to be wasted.

But no matter how fast she moved, no matter how fluidly she shifted from attack to attack, from target to target, Fuguki managed to block them all. That said, he had blanched at her interruption, and had actually taken a good few steps back since this round of strikes had begun. She raised one of the Kiba, and-

"OOF!"

She was sent staggering back by a massive foot planted in the middle of her chest. It wasn't that painful, but it was a struggle not to fall from the force of it. Fuguki was recovering from his surprise, and started to speak once again.

"Beheheh! You've got some spark in you, boy,"

Oh. That's right, she did! And if it wouldn't work against the man himself, then...

"But when a man like me speaks, it would be wise to lis-" "HAH"

She slammed the tips of her swords into the dirt and pushed her chakra through them, willing it towards the earth at Fuguki's feet. Electricity sprung to life, and the energy raced towards him, tearing up the ground along two parallel lines on a path that ended where he stood. The rocks he stood on crumbled and exploded outward, and Fuguki fell forward, a look of dumb shock on his face as he tried to process what just happened. She had another chance. This man had to die. She had to kill him NOW.

Ringo ran towards the man once more, fangs bared, and leapt up, readying a scissor cut aimed at the man's neck. Fuguki's shock receded quickly as she approached, and was replaced with rage.

"DAMMIT KID!"

His footing stabilized, and his grip on Samehada tightened as he reared the sword back. He was fast, faster than she thought he was. He moved to the side before her cut could connect and she landed harsh in a kneel. She flipped the blade closest to him around in her grip as she turned, and, after just one moment, surged back at the man with a quick slash, the plan playing through her head. She'd bring the sword past him in a slash, stop quick, and with her grip she could change it instantly to a stab once she was past him, bring it back to a hit, and use the electricity to-

 _"LISTEN TO ME!"_

Quicker than she could comprehend, Fuguki roared and ripped Samehada from beside him to smash it against her ribs.

Ringo went flying backwards, the movement from her rush being smacked harsh in the opposite direction. Somehow, her grip on the Kiba remained strong, but the pain hammered directly into her chest, and it was blinding. Her vision exploded into white for a moment, and she screamed as she rammed against the earth and rolled a fair distance, landing lamely on her side and pressing the hilt of one of her swords against the impacted ribs. Those were shattered. This was a fight ending injury. And her chakra...In just that brief moment of contact, Samehada had ripped out far more chakra than she'd used on all of her attacks so far, leaving her feeling both broken and nearly emptied.

A shadow loomed over her, Fuguki's presence forewarned the by harsh slap of his sandals against the wet earth. She managed to look up at him, and met his eyes.

She wished she hadn't. That mixture of a condescending smile and rage filled sneer was not what she wanted to be looking at right now. Dammit! She had to do something, she had to-

"AGH!"

Ringo screamed again as the top of Fuguki's massive foot sank into her stomach, sending her skidding against the mud once more.

"Beheheh...You gotta learn your place, boy. Swords or not," more pain ripped through her as the man stomped on her hide. Another scream tore from her throat, and she could only guess Fuguki was still smiling. "You're no match for me."

The pain was debilitating, but moreso was the overwhelming need to do something. She couldn't die here. She wouldn't let herself. She'd sooner live a life of misery than die this young. Her hands squeezed the hilts of the Thunderblades, and sparks erupted from the weapons, spreading over her skin. That is, until the sole of Fuguki's sandal came down hard on her hand with a piercing crack. Fuck. The pain was too much for her to handle, and the electricity sputtered out before she could do anything with it. The torture reached her eyes, and her face contorted into agony as the man ground her hand between the hilt it was holding and his foot. Her screams turned silent, just sputters of pain in between heavy breaths that begged to fill her lungs. She hated this man. She didn't want to die here. Dammit, she _didn't want to die_.

Fuguki's foot lifted, and Ringo tried desperately to stabilize herself; ready herself for whatever would come next from the giant. But rather than attack, he started speaking once more.

"B'heh...Behahah! BAHAHAHA! Oh, you've got some promise alright. I like you, kid. I really do. Maybe a few respect issues…But those can be...smoothed out, right?"

His face went fairly neutral, and he let out a 'hmm', thinking to himself for a moment. Ringo's thoughts were finally coming together to form another clear plan.

Do whatever the hell this guy wanted.

Fighting didn't seem the best idea now that he was talking again, but just to be careful, her good hand's grip tightened on the Kiba once again. Fuguki noticed this, eyes snapping right to the motion. His smile grew again, and he turned away from her, throwing his sword up and over his shoulder, securing Samehada in its place across his back.

"Heheh...fine. Alright, why not! I got a good feeling from you!"

She choked out her next words as best she could,

"So...w-hat does...that, mean…?"

"Mm?"

Fuguki turned back, looking down at her.

"It means you'll do fine for now. I told you who those swords belonged to."

He leant down, grinning face getting closer to hers as he harshly stated,

"Welcome aboard."

He laughed again as he stood and began walking away, arms behind his head.

"C'mon! Up! You've got people to meet. Better hope they see some good in you too. You've got a lot of work ahead of you, boy!"

Ringo slowly sat up, clutching her side with her unbroken hand. She'd need to tuck the swords into the sash around her waist; she didn't trust her grip to stay strong right now. But there is one thing she had to say…

"I'm...a girl…"

"Eh?"

Fuguki turned back again, slowly eyeing her up.

"...you sure?"

What the god damn hell-

"Yes."

Fuguki turned his head again, contemplating.

"Hmmm...that's a first..."

He started walking again. Dammit, she had to follow him, and her chest hurt so damn much. Getting up was like torture. If there was anything in Kiri that could temper her joy at the plan working out, it was the plan working out this painfully.

'But…' She thought, grunting as she slowly rose. 'He is right…'

Ringo had a lot of work to do. It seemed she was where she wanted to be, now she had to become strong enough for it to be worth it. There was much left ahead of her, and she'd need to put in a massive amount of effort to get through it.

* * *

AN: Hope everybody had a good week! Y'all know how good boiled cookies are? They're wicked good. M' in heaven rn.  
Probably gonna need an extra day at the gym this week, but damn is it worth it.

Next friday will officially mark the end of The Early Years!  
This chapter is probably my personal favorite in the first few. Some very fun lines, some neat situations...Sword smashed against our favorite protagonist. Good times.  
Maybe started a little slow, but we got some of that much needed action. Wouldn't be a Ringo story without some good ol' fightin'.

I'll see ya next week! Stay rad, yo, as i'm sure y'all are!

.

icestar0: fixed apt to aptitude, bless your heart.  
I love that you noticed how she'd never used chakra for much before! That's actually a little part of the plan; according to every source I can find about them, the Kiba _grant_ some degree of control over lightning techniques, and allow use of them with minimal chakra cost. Now that's going to require a good bit of training and refinement, obviously, but needless to say she probably won't be using too many chakra techniques outside of that. As well, she is about 14 when she first meets Fuguki, so spot on!  
Nailed it, my dude.

A lot of her use of the swords and training with them was, unfortunately, skipped over, and other survival skills were more implied than stated. That was one of my main worries about even having an Early Years arc, but with a character as unexplored as one of the Seven Swordsmen that isn't Zabuza or Kisame, I both really wanted to and felt like I had to go through something before her time in the group that felt right for her. That said, I didn't want to spend an overwhelming amount of story on it. A spicy prologue only gives way to so much setup before it gets boring for a lot of people :(

And yea, they didn't plan on letting just anybody get those swords. I hope what Fuguki was planning lived up to your hopes! It was a very fun fight from a writing standpoint, so I hope it brought on some excitement.

PS. She can't read ;P


	4. The Early Years: Part 3

Her swords, her constant companions ever since she first laid claim to them, imparted just as much fear in her as they did any opponent foolish enough to fight her.

The Kiba...Legendary swords that moved her from a slight threat to a real power. As much as they promised strength, promised safety, they also promised a life of enough danger where that strength would be nothing less than required to survive. Ringo had learned quite a bit in the time since she first got her hands on the Thunderblades, first and foremost being that she was only right in her life's philosophy, safety in power, to an extent. Strength meant living, but it didn't mean safety. She couldn't walk around Kiri doing whatever she wanted without fear, no, she was more afraid than ever before. She was just better at getting it done now.

But she could never regret picking up these swords. These things were a part of her, and they did make her strong. She'd worked with them, and her life hadn't felt nearly as full before she took them. She'd trained with them for years now, through brutal practice and new tests from every corner, she'd conquered it all with the Kiba in her hands. They belonged to her, and damn anyone who challenged her for them. They were _hers_. More so than anything before them the Kiba felt natural to her. They fit in her hands like puzzle pieces, connecting open spaces and making her whole.

The day she loses these swords is the day she dies.

It had been about four years since Fuguki first decided she had some promise in her, and they'd gone by quicker than she'd expected. One of the first things that Fuguki did with her was have her meet the other Ninja Swordsmen. As much of an honor as that was, it wasn't an experience she'd been happy to repeat whenever they all got together. Those people were both terrifying and crazy. Unfortunately, being a member herself meant she had to work with them quite often, and some of them quite liked to talk to each other. More than you'd expect, anyways. And, thinking about it...Maybe terrifying and crazy weren't bad descriptors for her anymore either. She certainly wasn't as bad as _Jinpachi;_ anybody who talks that much about blowing up their own family just isn't right in the head. And his buddy Kushimaru? Cruel beyond any other member. Still…

She had definitely learned to enjoy fighting. Maybe, just maybe, a bit too much. There was just something so gratifying about winning. That whoever she fought thought they could beat her, oh, she was _giddy_ to prove them wrong. And she developed a habit...Maybe not the nicest habit, but it was always fun to let them run a bit first. Especially when they were in groups. Three, four people, splitting up in different directions? Hunting them all down, taunting them as she cut them apart one by one, that was an absolute joy. And when she found the last one, thinking they might just get away? Then she could take it _slow_ , take her time and really _enjoy_...

She liked to play with her food. That was all.

So she fit in with the other Swordsmen. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Besides, she had more than reached their levels at this point. She thrived in this group, like she was born to be a part of it, filling a space in history that was just waiting for her arrival. The Kiba fit her like a glove, and she had mastered them. Her talent and drive to prove herself with them was what had kept a few of the other members from killing her a few times down the line. Saying the Kiba were hers no longer meant that they were in her possession at the moment. It meant they _belonged_ with her. Any other member could attest to that.

She'd grown well in the past four years, in more than just her skill. Short still, yes, perhaps annoyingly so, but more lethal than ever. And she was about nineteen now, nobody could look at her and think her a child. Height aside, her face and build showed her age well enough. Her hair had grown quite long as well. She debated cutting it again, damn whatever people think, but it did give her quite an imposing stance. And the way it whirled along with her when she attacked...It was fine for now. She could leave it.

She had also grown into herself quite a bit; having the strength of a Seven Ninja Swordsmen member let you get away with a few quirks when it came to personality. She knew what she enjoyed. Hunting down an enemy, having a good taunting match before killing someone, having things, taking things...stuff like that. And kids were cute. She could ignore that if she was their age, she'd be cutting them down for stale bread. She could afford a bit of charity for a kid who said please, and could afford to laugh her ass off if a six year old decided it was a smart idea to try to take her on instead of just killing them like any other challenger. She was more than good enough to indulge in a little cuteness. It's not like someone would judge her for having soft spots or liking a few cutesy things when they were stuck on the ends of her blades. And animals...Well, cute as they could be, animals were food, so cutting them up wasn't a problem. Ringo ate animals. She didn't eat kids. She wasn't _that_ far gone.

However, things had...well, things had gone to shit in Kiri the past half year. Not that it was well off before, but things got exponentially worse. Depending on who you asked, of course, but anybody who says things are fine now has half their brain in candyland, because the fourth Mizukage's gone fucking nuts. He'd always been a little out there, ever since he was elected, but lately had just taken the cake. He reinforced academy practices where students had to kill each other to graduate. He let corruption run rampant. He was ruthless when it came to enforcing rules, and more rules were instated every month. People were dying in Kiri faster than ever. It didn't affect her very much, being part of the group she was, but damn, the guy was getting more and more out there with every word he said.

All in all, she didn't have a lot of good things left in Kiri. She never did, but lately even her job didn't seem worth it. Serving that psychopath directly? Not her idea of a good time. Who knows what would happen? People hadn't started defecting yet, many were still clinging on to his decency in the previous years, but the outrage was real and it was the loudest thing in the village anymore. If this kept up, it was just a matter of time before the people would want him lynched.

And there was one thing Ringo had realized in the years she'd been in the Seven Swordsmen...

She was ill. Of course she was ill, disease ran rampant in the dump that is Kirigakure, she was always ill. Practically everyone was. So she'd never thought much of it. Whenever she felt a pinching in her guts, whenever her cough came back, or she had a headache, or a dizzy spell and some breathing trouble, she chalked it up to the fumes of the cesspool, stuck it out, and it would always go away after a night of sleep. It was never anything too bad.

Which is why the symptoms lately worried her. They didn't go away overnight. The pain would persist, and it would get worse here and there. Every once in awhile, it would be debilitating. She'd need to just curl in a ball and clutch her stomach until it calmed down, her vision stopped blurring, and the pain receded. Once that had started, she decided she needed to find a proper doctor and fix it.

To be honest, it wasn't very hard to find doctors in Kiri, since every one of them was visited extensively. Their services were so often required. That said, it was very very difficult to find a doctor that actually knew what the hell they were talking about. Mist wasn't exactly known for its good health practices, any doctor would look good around here telling someone to gulp a cup of sake and tough it out. She needed the best Mist could offer, and the best were pretty damn exclusive. That said...Well, one of the perks of being a member of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen was having a good deal of 'persuasion'. A bit of misbehaving, and she'd have her health with just a slap on the wrist for it.

Just a bit of searching was all it took to find the best of the best around here. A bit of information gathering, a few threats, and she had her man; a doctor located at one of the larger Mist villages outside Kiri proper. Apparently, he's the guy the Mizukage himself would go to if his health declined. That bit of knowledge wasn't the largest confidence booster considering everything she knew about their glorious leader, but the best available was the best available. That said, he wasn't the kind of doctor she could be treated by if she just showed up at his house and asked. But that was fine. People tended to say yes to ninja of her caliber when they were asked 'nicely'.

She found her way to the village without any trouble. The other members of the Seven Swordsmen would be pissed when she came back; she wasn't exactly telling them anything. She would just cut out for a few days and turn up again. People did that sort of thing in a group like this. It would be looked past.

The doctor's building was very average looking, blended seamlessly into the rest of the village, tall, square, and without decoration. It was exactly what she was looking for; every possible entrance besides the front door was trapped to hell, and there was no sign from the outside a man of any kind of importance lived here. But Ringo was one of the greats in Kiri now. This guy couldn't hide from her, and he wouldn't get her to leave without either a good bit of blood let on his end, or the treatment she was coming to him for.

She entered through a trapped window on the side of the building. There wasn't really much of a worry of being spotted, as the night was foggy and proper vision was never an easy thing to have around here. It was easy to force open, and easy enough to dodge the barrage of senbon that came after. And the follow up kunai. Sheesh. Those things stunk to hell and back. Poisoned? Probably poisoned. If this guy knew his stuff, he'd poison them.

The inside of the building...was seriously dark. Pitch black. She was in some room that looked like a large kitchen. She wasn't going to risk opening any of the cupboards to see what he had, this place was dangerous enough without extra snooping. For now, she just had to find him, and wait for the right moment.

A small bit of further skulking around the halls of the building turned up more than enough to show that this guy was, in fact, a medical professional. Stored discretely in various areas of the building were better quality tools and supplies than she'd ever seen in Kiri before. One room in particular was clearly dedicated to treatment, and it looked...just a bit scary. Should healing really involve this many sharp objects? And that chair with the straps looks like something you'd stick somebody into to stop them from running. Spooky.

It was slow going searching every bit of the house, but she had all night, and was reasonably sure the guy was asleep. This was confirmed when she approached the second to last room she had to search, and looked through the cracks of the door. Bedroom. Occupied. _Perfect_. She wouldn't risk opening this door. Not for a million yen. But she could wait. One moment was all she needed, and morning was fast approaching. She just had to keep herself hidden, and wait for him to pass. It wouldn't be hard, especially since this man wasn't supposed to have any combat training himself. Not that he couldn't kill her terribly if she gave him a chance though, so...It was better safe than sorry. She'd stay ready to pounce all night.

The doctor rose with the sun, and the moment to strike was approaching. Hidden behind a break in the hall, Ringo could hear something in the room shift. A couple minutes passed by in silence, but then the clicks and thuds of disarmed traps and locks spread through the hallway, followed by a slow creak of the door as it was pushed open. She was only going by sound; his shadow was behind him. A pretty stupid design flaw, since she wouldn't be able to hide this easily if her shadow showed clearly in the doorway. Just a few steps down the hall, and then…

Ringo sprung out into the hallway as the man began to pass by, slamming him back with her fists to his chest and turning him so his back hit the wall, the guy giving a deep grunt at the impact. Her swords, having been readied for hours in anticipation of this moment, stabbed cleanly into the wall, one on each side of his neck, catching it between them in an X. Ringo grinned a sharp smile as the man's eyes opened, looking down at her.

"Hey there~"

He didn't respond immediately. He was eyeing her up and down, probably trying to figure out if there was an easy way out of this situation. Poor guy.

"You the doctor?"

He stayed quiet still, but was prompted into talking by a quick pinch of the swords pressing on the sides of his neck.

"I'm a doctor."

"Good boy."

She slowly eased her swords back until they just lifted from his skin, and spoke again.

"I'm in need of your expertise, y'know? Help a girl out?"

He didn't look amused, but he didn't look all that surprised either. Doctors like this must have it pretty tough. Guy was probably expecting something like this to happen eventually. Heck, maybe it had happened before! He just stared her down for a couple seconds longer, closed his eyes, and let a breath out as she smirked at him.

He agreed _readily_.

This was how she found herself back in the room with the weird torture chair. If doctor man thought he could get her in that thing, he was sorely mistaken. She wasn't that stupid.

Luckily, he didn't try to convince her. Instead, he sat her on a countertop and began through his checkups after being reminded by Ringo that she would be watching his every move, so he better not do anything but check her health. Most of it was boring, just standard stuff and questions. What seems wrong, where's the pain, details details details. At least he was thorough, and seemed to be taking this seriously. That was a good choice. She had to remove a few articles of clothing, let him poke and prod, put em' back on, and it was honestly amusing. If the man didn't have such a stern look plastered across his face, she'd probably make a few jokes about his intentions.

She let out a bit of blood for him (She wasn't letting him draw it. No way. Who knows what his needles are coated with?), and sat back as he tested whatever he was testing.

"Agh…"

That damn cramp...That was the worst thing about whatever this illness was, was the sharp pains in her gut. Sometimes she felt it in her chest too, but the more to her stomach it was, the more it tended to hurt. At least with one type of cramp, she'd know around when to expect it. Throwing another type on top of that wasn't fair. This guy better hurry up with his damn blood tests, because she wanted this to end. And it was taking _forever_. He kept walking back and forth across the room, checking this, carrying that to there, reading this while holding that. It was getting tedious. She'd been in here the better part of the day now, and there was nothing to do but watch the doctor do doctor things. As ready as she was to cut him up at any moment, she'd even stopped paying attention completely for a while in favor of idle daydreams.

She was drawn back to him when he walked up to her, papers in hand.

"I believe I know what's going on with your health."

Well. Good! He better! Damn! After a moment passed in silence, however, she started to feel a bit of worry well up in her. It didn't show on his face, but he was hesitating, like he was considering whether or not to tell her.

"Yeah? And?"

He sighed, somehow still retaining his neutral look, taking a moment to consider the words he'd use.

"It's very late to be catching this. You've had this for a very long time now. It grows slowly, spreading to different organs, but doesn't become very dangerous until it's had years to cultivate. However, the disease has reached its final stage."

"...Final stage?"

"At this point, it's essentially untreatable."

Untreatable. That isn't a good word. Definitely not something you wanna hear in a doctor's office.

"So...what does that mean? I gotta just live with this? Are you-"

"It means you'll die."

Oh.

Oh, no. No, no, no no no no NO.

A shot of panic tore through her, and her hands felt numb as she stared blankly forward. He was joking. He had to be. She searched his face frantically for any sign that he was fucking with her. A punishment for breaking in, maybe. For threatening him. But he looked...steady. Like he knew what he was saying, what it meant, and was saying it because he had to. Sweat broke out onto her forehead, and, as always when her fear became too much to handle, it gave way to rage.

Her swords were already drawn. It only took a moment to kick the man back, causing him to fall and hit his back against the wall with a heavy thunk and grunt, and point the edge of a sword at the middle of his face.

"You're _LYING_ to me!"

He had to be. Illness? Fucking _ILLNESS?_ Ringo faced DEMONS. Destroyed villages with her own hands! She fought the WORST in Kiri, over and over, and none of it could take her down. Trial after trial, year after year of training, and tests, and combat, and some _disease_ was after her now!?

"Even if this was caught earlier, there isn't any medicine that could cure it. Nothing would've changed."

Nothing would have changed. So that's it!? Untreatable. That's what he said. Incurable, unfixable, nothing he could do. That's what he...

"Stop LYING!"

"I'm telling you the truth. The disease has progressed to its terminal point. You have a bit of time left, but it will get worse quickly. There's nothing anybody could-"

"NOTHING!? There's NOTHING!?"

She needed- she needed something. She needed to do something. All of this energy was building up in her, and she was ready to end something. She could...She could kill this guy. End him where he's sat and burn him up like the LYING PIECE OF GARBAGE HE IS.

No. No, that's a bad idea, a, a bad plan...The Mizukage would have her head when he finds out, if- if that even really _matters_ now.

"...rrrRRAGH!"

Electricity ripped through her arms and out of her swords as she slashed them down into a tray of medical instruments, sparks flying out in every direction as the loud crashes or falling metal filled the room. She had- she had to...She had to _get out of here_. This room was tiny, it was god damn _suffocating_ , and she was burning up. She had to leave.

She quickly found the window she'd entered from, and leapt out, jumping to the top of the building and pushing off again. She didn't care who saw her right now. She had to get back to Kiri proper, get her thoughts in order. She wasn't thinking clearly.

The run back to the hidden village was...quiet. Her thoughts stopped racing, and gradually disappeared until she wasn't really thinking about anything. In their place was just emptiness, and a feeling like she was falling tight in her stomach.

When she finally got back to the edge of the village, she didn't go in. Instead, she stood on a tree branch for...some amount of time. She lost track. It was already dark when she'd arrived back, all she knew was that it wasn't morning yet. Standing for a minute longer after she realized she had been staring at the village wall for however long, she turned around and started moving again. She knew a spot nearby; one of the few ponds in Water Country that was actually still fresh. It was a spot she went to whenever she got tired of dealing with all the shit in Kiri. The clean water relaxed her.

She found her small pond easily enough in the dark, and it was a fairly clear night tonight anyways. Deciding on a branch overlooking the bit of water, she sat down. Once more, time was passing her by, and she couldn't make heads or tails of everything drifting through her mind. She was...ill. She knew that, but never before had it been anything serious. Just a bit of pain to be toughed out. Another annoyance to deal with. All this time it was the same thing? Every time she felt sick it was _this?_ This...this disease that was taking away EVERYTHING she had WORKED FOR. In an instant, every empty crack in her mind was filled and overflowing with rage. Before she could stop herself, her entire body tensed like a spring, she raised her hand up, and-

*BAM*

Fuck! Ow. Fuck. She punched the fucking tree. Her fist was bleeding. Shit.

She shook her hand off, and squeezed it with the other, pressing it firm against the cloth of her pants. This wasn't...This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

She was one of Kiri's greatest now. She'd finally earned that title. One of the very best, part of an organization thats fame for its skill was growing quickly, and growing far beyond Mist's borders. She was young. She was very young. For a mist ninja, she was more than experienced, but if you're alive around twenty it tends to mean you're here to stay, not to be picked off by some...some damned disease that made a home in your guts. This was supposed to be her beginning. She didn't make it this far for her story to end just as she picked up her pen.

In the space the exerted rage had filled, fear once again filled her.

No. No, she couldn't die here. She didn't...shit. Dammit, there was so much left for her. What the hell happened to all of that? To seeing the rest of the world? What it had to offer? Living how she wanted? She still answered to god damn _Fuguki_ half the time, this wasn't HER life! She wasn't...What about everything she had planned to do!? Travel, become a legend throughout the whole world, not just kiri, take a protege, teach them everything she knew so that she would _never_ disappear entirely from this world. There was...so much...

Someone was moving towards her. The rhythmic taps of sandals on wood gave them away. She didn't even look up; just kept her eyes trained on the still surface of her perfect little pond, reflecting the moonlight back up at her. Whoever it was landed a couple trees to her side with a thump.

"Yo! Was wondering where you got to."

Jūzō. Out of all the people in the Seven Swordsmen, he was probably the easiest to deal with. Easy to please, easy to listen to, easy to make go away. Not as dangerously unhinged as most of the others. But he was still a damn _freak_ , and Ringo was most definitely not feeling like putting up with him right now. And how'd he know she was here, anyways? The privacy of her little pondly paradise...

"So!" the swordsmen barked out, jumping to the same branch as her and sitting next to her with a grunt, arm resting on a leg planted on the branch. "Where ya been, eh? You disappeared yesterday. You uh...You haven't been sittin' here since then, have you?"

"Mm."

That clearly wasn't the response he was looking for. She was rarely her chattiest around the others in the Seven Swordsmen, but she tends to be respectful enough to not brush them off until they get annoying. Then her tongue might be a bit sharp, and a few barbs could fly back and forth. She was never opposed to insulting them, since they all deserved whatever she could dish out anyways. But she's never _this_ noncommittal when one of them tries to talk to her. Jūzō looked a tad lost. The man was too damn stubborn, he never just dropped it. Why the hell did he insist on chatting with everyone else in the group? This wasn't some sappy storybook team preaching about friendship, they're killers that stuck together because they're all good at killing.

"...Soooo...what, this a girl thing?"

"If I said yes, would you leave it alone?"

"Hah! Not after that question I won't! C'mon, out with it."

Ringo sighed. She wasn't getting away from this. She had to give him an answer. Of course, it didn't have to be _all_ of the answer…

"Just thinking. About Mist."

Now that caught Jūzō's attention. It was all too clear by the way he turned to look at her, and cocked his head a bit when he spoke again.

"Oh yeah? Mist, huh? Never seemed to bother you too much before, even when Yagura went a lil," he spun a finger by his head, "y'know."

"Ah... Guess I'm thinking more about myself."

And that was true. She was most definitely thinking about herself. Her companion seemed to know he was getting to the meat of the story now.

"Ahhh...I see, I see. So what's got ya so tied up you spent a whole day starin' at a puddle?"

Ringo breathed out of her nose, sinking down into herself, letting some of the tension in her muscles relax. How long had she been sitting that stiff?

"Nothing for you to know. It all just...got to me a bit. I needed some time."

Yeah, she wouldn't let out any more than that. Jūzō didn't need to know what was going on with her just yet. He'd find out eventually. They all would. But she didn't need him here right now. Lucky for her, the guy seemed to get the gist, grunting in affirmation and pushing off his leg to stand.

"I'll tell the others. Just come back before the sun's up, or Fuguki's gonna be pissed."

"Fuguki can screw himself."

"Hah! I'll tell him you said that for ya."

Ringo managed a smirk, before narrowing her eyes and pointing at him.

"By the way! Don't you _dare_ tell anyone about this pond! It's mine!"

Jūzō looked absolutely stunned for a second before breaking out into that barking laughter of his and waving her off.

"Sure, sure! Keep your privacy puddle, jeez. Later, Ringi."

With that, he jumped back through the trees towards Kiri's walls, the echoes of his jumps quickly disappearing with his image. Once more, she was alone.

Her smile fell from her face as she remembered why she was actually here in the first place. Somehow, she'd almost forgotten...Ugh. She brought her legs onto the branch and rested her back against the trunk properly. What the hell had Kiri ever done for her? What happened to seeing the world? She never had the means to leave, and when she finally did, she never had enough reason to leave those means behind. Now, that lack of reason was suddenly replaced with an urgency so quick and severely it almost didn't feel real.

She knew that the doctor wasn't lying. Every time the stinging came back she could feel the dread of knowing he was right. Every cough of hers, she could feel her lungs protesting, every effort worse than the last. This...this would kill her. And nobody could do anything about it. Ringo's gaze rose from the water to the moon that it reflected, and she laid there staring, one sentence repeating itself over and over in her head, pushing its way from her lips into the cold open night.

"I don't...want to die…"

That was always her goal. It was what she fought for. And now, now that she was strong enough to really start living...This wasn't fair. She had to think. What was going to happen to her? She knew she was right in thinking that the other member's would find out about her little escapade. The Mizukage's personal doctor is assaulted by one of his finest soldiers, only to reveal they had a vicious terminal disease that would quickly end them from here on out. Yeah. That's a story that's going to be reported. That slap on the wrist was turning out to be the end of her.

How much time did she even really have with this illness? Even if she can escape retribution for messing up the Mizukage's doctor, he'd never said how much time was left before she barreled out of the building. Just that it "would get worse quickly". Would she just...keel over tomorrow? No, she had a bit left. It was getting more and more painful, but she had a few months in her at the very least. Maybe a year? It was honestly impossible to tell, but damn her if she kicks the bucket that fast.

So...what could she do? Skip out on Kiri and see the sights before she dropped dead? Somehow that didn't sound as cathartic as she hoped. It was just...It was just _sad_. Every option that ended with her dying just seemed terrible, no matter what she did with the time she had left. Simply living had been her entire reason for getting this far. She wasn't...She couldn't drop that now.

And suddenly, a determination welled up within her. There was no way she'd let it end this way. She just had to come up with a plan. She had a good track record when it came to plans so far. That doctor was the best in Mist, but there were better out there. Mist had nothing more to offer her. What a shock. Research it herself? Not a chance. There were a lot of reasons that wouldn't work, and if a proper medical worker said "give up and die", she didn't have a chance at finding something. Kumo was strong, but their focus was almost entirely on the military. Suna...Had the monopoly on poisons. This wasn't poison, but it was similar. Slowly killing you from the inside? That sounded like something Suna might like to take a look at...But then there was another name that came to mind. In the last Great War, Suna was awfully pissy about somebody from Leaf, weren't they?

...Tsunade. That was it. The medical genius heralded across the Hidden Villages. She performed more miracles in a single war than most countries collectively did in a century. A miracle worker...but then she thought about Leaf. Leaf didn't like Mist, not really. They looked the other way until now, but they sure as hell didn't like how things were going, especially after mister high and mighty Mizukage decided the kids should kill each other even _more_. And Ringo was high up in Mist. They would never looked past that. Tsunade was with Leaf...or...actually, or was she? Didn't she get pissed at Konoha after the war? Something happened, she forgot what. But, if Tsunade wasn't in Konoha...She'd still be in Fire country, a true defection would have been reported everywhere. She could be willing to do something...Yeah...Yeah! With enough begging, maybe if Ringo bowed? Maybe enough money. Or a few years of indentured servitude. Whatever the hell it would take, really.

She could find something to live for later, right now living was what she wanted most. She had the Kiba, a bit of cash tucked securely in her clothing, and that's all she really needed. She could find Tsunade. The woman was a celebrity enough to have her name passed around even Kiri when Ringo was a child, somebody had to know where she was.

She stood, shaking off the protesting stings coming from her abdomen. There was more to this world than Mist. If nobody in Kiri could help her, then dammit, she'd find somebody who can! She took a deep breath, grounding herself. Kiri had been home, but it never had anything worth keeping. Maybe she'd come back sometime. Maybe not. She didn't know. Right now she didn't even know if she'd have the chance.

That thought spurred her forward, and she took her first leaps on a path towards the shores that divided Mist from the main continent.

The night was cool and clear. Barely any fog had risen right now, leaving the path to a new life exposed and ready to be traversed.

It was in this night, blanketed by the light of the moon, that Ameyuri Ringo abandoned Hidden Mist.

* * *

AN: Hope everyone had a good halloween! Wicked spooky dress up and hella candy. What a good night.

That's it for the opening arc! We're now CURRENT. Stuff's gettin' DONE. Hell yea!

So, I got some news for you! I'm now volunteering at a local LGBT youth shelter, and, because of that, I have a lot less time to write now.  
I actually have quite a bit of this story written so far, way beyond this chapter, but editing and rewriting it all takes a surprising amount of time. Add on to that the fact that I now have to work, and that I'm working on _another_ story alongside this one, and the weekly chapters are getting harder and harder. I managed to pump out the whole of the first arc within a month, and that's awesome, but it's not looking too sustainable right now. I'll try to really work on this story specifically this week to have a good enough backlog to keep the weekly updates going, but it may turn bi-weekly after a couple more weeks of this. I'll have to see by then. Let me know if y'all would be ok with that, or if the weekly updates are where its at for you.

And, you CAN expect the second story to get published relatively soon! It's not an Ameyuri story, but it still features one of my favorite characters in the series!  
Not sure you'd be able to guess who, but if you know me as an author you can probably guess it's 1: not a main character, and 2: a girl.  
Odds are it'll be uploading bi-weekly no matter what, because most of my focus is on Beyond the Mist, but I'm actually really looking forward to releasing it.  
S'a real cutesy thing, pretty damn happy in comparison to what this story has been so far :'D

Definitely not the exact same style as this story is, but I hope you all can enjoy it too!  
Look forward to the second arc of BTM, and I'll see y'all next week!

Have a good day, yo


	5. Beyond Mist: Part 1

Kiri's shorelines were just as dark and terrible as further inland. Having never been this far from the hidden village, Ringo found herself almost disappointed as she treaded onto the thick wet sand of the coastline, looking around. The circumstances may not have been what she'd prefer, but these were still the first steps to a life outside of Mist. Couldn't there be a ray of sunshine or anything? The sun was coming up and it still looked like a hellscape, the rolling mist off shore looking like it would swallow and devour anything it found, and the ground beneath her marred by a cracked brown seafoam dried over the sand. At least it finalized the thought that she really wouldn't miss this place. Nothing much was being left behind.

Finding a way across the water wasn't a problem, not for her. There were only a few shacks and some abandoned buildings in the docks around here, but so long as there was a boat and a sailor, there would be someone to bring her to the mainland. Besides, seeing as it was nearing morning, there were already a few boating types out, getting ready for whatever it is they do for a living.

Trying to talk to them was...an experience. They seemed absolutely terrified of her, whether because they knew who she was, or just the simple fact that she had weaponry openly carried on her sides, a Kiri headband adorning her. She probably could've asked for their firstborn child and they would've agreed, begging her to spare them. Lucky them, all she wanted right now was a boat ride.

A small bit of negotiation later, Ringo had her transportation. The man she decided on to take her over was an older fellow, probably about fifty some years of age. She promised him a few coins as thanks, even though she was sure he would've done it for free. Anybody as old as him out here that's still living _has_ to stay alive by acquiescing to any demands placed on them. Honestly, whatever got her out there faster. By the time day properly comes around, the Seven Ninja Swordsmen will have noticed she's properly gone, and the Mizukage will have been alerted of her condition.

The boat he was loading them into was...small. It was tiny, it creaked, and it was all around uncomfortable. Ringo understood the reasons for it, of course, any larger boat risked getting spotted, and it was good her transporter understood the requirement of secrecy with this. She honestly doubted he fully knew what was happening or why she was here, just that she was and he had treat everything carefully.

Once they were pushed off from shore, it was a long, slow ride of silence. It wasn't bad at first, but the ride would take most of the day, and after hours of passing through water with no visibility it was honestly starting to get to her. Only once had the rower tried speaking to her, not even turning back to look at her.

"On a mission?"

She was wary at first, debating whether or not she should even answer. Still, head resting languidly on her hand, staring blankly forward as they slowly traversed the water, she decided there really wasn't any harm in giving the guy a response.

"No."

It was an exceptionally simple exchange, but it gave him everything he needed to know. The man didn't bother her again after that.

So they'd returned to silence, and once again she felt like she was slowly going crazy. The only thing she could do was focus on the stinging pain in her abdomen, and that was decidedly not something she wanted to think too much about. But, she couldn't distract herself with "there's some mist" and "wow, his rowing sure is interesting", so Ringo was forced to sit, and think.

At first she thought about the future, how she might be able to find Tsunade, where she would start looking, who she could ask, etcetera. However, you can only plan so much, and soon enough she was thinking about the present. Her condition, how it was, where the pain was located and how severe it was, and after a quick mental slap to stop focusing on it right now, that soon trailed into thoughts about Mist. Did they know yet? It was impossible to tell the time of day in the cover of the fog they traveled through, but it had to be at least midday by now. Would they immediately assume she'd abandoned the village? Would they know her reasons for it? Was she already labeled a missing nin, or a traitor?

That thought took over her mind for a while. Her hands reached up, untying the cloth that kept Mist's symbol displayed in the middle of her head. She turned the thing up to her, holding it lazily in her lap.

'I shouldn't have this anymore.'

It was definitely true. Ringo had her look, and she wore Kiri's symbol like she was supposed to, but now that she left the Mist village it had to go somehow. The question now was what to do with it?

Maybe she should cut through it, like most missing nin. That's definitely what she'd be labeled. Or just pry the metal bit off of the band? They'd both achieve essentially the same thing since she was well known enough to be identified by appearance; it would let people know she was no longer part of Mist. But, the two options had wholly different meanings. The line through it meant hostility. That she disagreed enough with the village to leave. That it wasn't how she felt it should be. And this wasn't about the village, however much she did disagree with Yagura. She wasn't mad, not at Mist anyways. She just...left. What she needed wasn't in Mist now, so she turned her back on it. Whatever home it was to her, it wasn't worth staying there anymore.

Hooking her hands beneath the metal and flushing some chakra through them, she pried off the metal with a grunt, cutting through the fabric that kept it in place and holding it securely in her hand. After retying the cloth around her head, now devoid of any affiliation, she focused on the metal. She debated just throwing it into the ocean; getting rid of it like that would mean it's truly lost forever, but it did seem like something of a waste.

"Hey."

The rower didn't turn, or give any sign of acknowledgement that she'd spoken. She hadn't expected him to.

"Need a Kiri headband?"

This time he let a slow breath out of his nose, a deep 'hmm' softly filling the silence. These things weren't a gold mine, but they could fetch a decent price, especially since the leaders in Mist seemed to have some way to tell a real headband from a counterfeit.

"'Could take it. No trouble for me."

Wordlessly, Ringo placed the headband's symbol on the floor of the boat with the muted thunk of metal on wood, and slid it towards the front with a foot. The man bent down and picked the thing up, securing it inside his robes and continuing to row.

After another hour or so of slow going, the mist finally began to fade, and the new environment she was looking for was revealed. They were still on open water, no land in sight just yet, but there was a world of difference in the saturation of the sky, the deep blue of the water, and the puffy white of the clouds sparsely scattered overhead. It was so...clear. She had to bring a hand to cover her eyes, the sun shone so bright. It was...breathtaking, honestly, despite how light and thin the air was. For the first time in her life, Ringo truly felt she was somewhere worthwhile. Somewhere outside of Water Country.

She couldn't help but smile. Now, with no loyalty and outside of that dreaded fog, everything came together to make her feel truly free. It was almost amusing. This would make her one of the first defectors from Mist, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the Mizukage himself.

The others would probably be pissed she left at all, let alone that she took the Kiba with her, but she was absolutely not going to give them up. As far as she's concerned, they were hers and hers alone. The one thing from Kiri that she could never live without. After all, they were a part of her now, not that damn village. Just having them didn't mean any obligation to the Swordsmen, or to Mist. And even if it did? Screw 'em.

The sun had started to lower; it wasn't close to night yet, but the brighter part of the day was coming to a close. Perhaps not surprisingly, time seemed to move much faster once they escaped the fog banks, and Ringo was more than happy to have her attention drawn by the waves lapping against the boat. Thus, it was quickly enough that a sliver of land appeared on the horizon, and the feeling of freedom rebounded.

'That's the Land of Fire. That's a whole other world from where I've been.'

It was almost overwhelming. As they got closer and closer to the land, it was painfully obvious just how different it was. The trees were tall and puffed out, the ground was covered by grass, and everything was so damn green it was almost blinding. Every color was so clear that it hurt to look at anything.

The boat slowly came to shore, sliding against the sand. Stepping out, Ringo stretched her legs and gave the man the coins he was promised. Before she could set off, he pointed down the beach.

"Village closest t'here is along the coast up that ways. Called Hidoku-Wanai. Fishin' town. You can find a bit've anything there."

Ringo regarded him with a nod that was quickly reciprocated as he pushed his boat back into the water, climbing into it as it rocked slightly, floating once more back to Mist. And with that, she was alone in a new country. Wow. She just got smuggled into Fire Country! That was alarmingly easy.

'Guess I should thankful?'

No fighting, no sneaking, she just...slid into shore and was home free. She could see why Konoha was thought of as a refuge country of sorts.

Anyways, she'd move in just a bit into the more forested region, and set off following along the coast. First stop, Hidoku-Wa-WHOA. Ringo almost fell as the ground beneath her shifted. Getting away from the water's edge, the sand was so...soft? She leaned down, picking up a bit of it, and it quickly sifted through her fingers, back to the beach. It was...hot, and dry. Powdery, like dust but...heavier. That's weird. Sand in Kiri was always either wet, or filled to the brim with enough crap that you'd never even think of touching it.

One thing's for sure, walking on the stuff was just plain bizarre. Finding herself a bit grateful that nobody was here watching, she shuffled the rest of the way to the treeline where, thankfully, the ground solidified into a compact layer of dirt.

Sighing to herself as she started walking, Ringo mentally went through her current possessions. She had her outfit, her swords, and enough money in a secure pouch strapped to her thigh to last maybe a couple days or so. She'd probably need to employ some less than honest means here. It definitely wasn't above her, and staying well fed and rested right now was important; a fact she was constantly reminded by every time a pinch shot up through her chest.

Walking through a proper forest was quite the experience. In some ways it was similar to Kiri's. There were still bugs, there were still trees, junk like that. But Fire Country's forests seemed...fuller. Vegetation was spilling over everywhere she looked, and proper animals could be heard just out of sight, birds singing loudly from the treetops. It smelled better here, too. And the ground...if there was one thing she could get used to fast, it was walking on something that isn't wet, mud, or slush. A regular dirt path felt like a dream come true.

This was honestly the revelation she'd dreamed of, ever since she first heard stories about the world outside of Kiri. She'd been there so long, she'd started to think that's just how things were everywhere; dulled and muted, air damp and thick. It really felt like even moving was easier, not having to press against any heavy air to move. Rather, it was like...swimming, strangely enough. Swimming through bright and clear water, like she could jump up and start floating.

Though, good mood aside, perhaps she was still a bit paranoid. Despite knowing it was animals running around through the underbrush, her hands flexed around the hilts of the Kiba every time a sudden noise hit her ears. Besides, anybody would have to be an idiot to rob someone that looked like her. Short as she was, she wasn't _small_. Throw in some sharp teeth, swords, and an outfit from Mist, and anybody who tried it would be begging for death in seconds.

The boater may have said that Hidoku-Wanai was the closest town, but that didn't mean it was a short walk. By the time forest opened to reveal a town, the sun was setting, and many people were returning to their homes. It did surprise her, however, how many buildings were simply turning on lights to continue running as it darkened. For a fishing town, this place sure had a healthy nightlife; not that she was complaining. Made getting information and a room that much easier.

Stepping onto one of the town's cobbled streets, Ringo thought about everything she was seeing.

Everything considered, Hidoku-Wanai...wasn't terrible. Not terrible at all. Actually, it was a pretty nice place, though she couldn't be sure if that was just the new environment talking. It did reek pretty strongly of fish, but at least it was _fresh_ fish. People with stands and stalls that were packing up their wares for the night stared at her as she passed by. Some of them looked wary, others curious, but they all looked just a bit intimidated. It was honestly hard to pick which she'd rather that be from; her reputation reaching this far, or just looking scary and wearing clothing from the Land of Water. It was...probably the second. None of these people looked like shinobi, but she could dream about worldwide fame at least. It's probably better she didn't get recognized immediately, anyways.

Now, which of these people could help her…? Considering that all she really needed to start was a map of Fire Country, any of them would probably do.

'I guess I just...grab one?'

That worked well enough in Mist. No real reason something that simple should change. Spotting someone, she shouted out.

"Hey, you!"

The gentlemen in question, a young man who was packing up his food stall, maybe mid twenties, turned towards her. Instantly he took a step back, starting to sweat as she marched towards him.

"A-ah, yes? Can I- can I help you?"

"Where can I get a map?"

He started quaking in his boots.

"A m-m-ma...a-..a m-map…?"

Wow. What the hell was that? She resisted the urge to narrow her eyes at him. Whatever was bugging him, that probably wouldn't help. Had he never seen a ninja before? Did he think she was robbing him?

'Just play nice, get the info, and go somewhere else.'

"Yeah, a map. Of Fire Country."

He spent a good fifteen seconds sputtering.

She flashed him a polite smile.

He looked like he was about to cry.

If anything that seemed to make it worse! What was wrong with this guy? Is she really _that_ intimidating? She's...flattered, but holy hell, get a grip. She didn't have to be this nice about it. She even smiled at him! Not everybody gets to see that. She couldn't kill this guy, not after just arriving in this country. That stuff was off limits for now. Still, she was frustrated and this dude was of absolutely no help, so she knocked over a box of fish and walked away as he let out a shrill scream.

He wouldn't do anything about it.

Obviously, this wouldn't work. She needed somewhere better to gather information. Luckily, active as this place was, it wasn't hard to find a place that sounded full, a bright, flashing sign proclaiming something in large bold letters hung above the doorway.

Walking inside, Ringo honestly wasn't sure what to expect from it. It was a bar, as she suspected, but it wasn't the same as the bars she went to in Kiri; it was too clean and well lit to be compared, and the people were all loud. That was the most surprising part, how happy everybody seemed in here. They were your standard bar goers, to an extent. Big, muscly, and drunk, but they didn't seem to care one bit how much attention they attracted. The bartender was smiling along with them, chatting animatedly with a few patrons. He'd probably be the one to ask for anything.

Walking across the bar was an experience in and of itself. People would look right at her as she walked, and talk loudly in groups of three or four. This...wasn't like Mist at all. Honestly, it was a little uncomfortable. The guests in Kiri would never...stare so blatantly. It was creepy.

The bartender regarded her with a smile and a nod, as if prompting her to speak. Stopping in her tracks, she squinted at him, and he cocked a brow at her, dumb smile still plastered on his face. A few seconds passed with tension mostly on her end, and she finally closed the last few steps between them, eyes warily watching his own.

"Yo. Know where I can get a map?"

That was casual, right? The guy chuckled. Was that good? She only had one experience talking to the people here so far, and she hoped it wasn't something to base everything here off of. He shifted his weight a bit on his feet, and gave a thoughtful 'hmm'.

"Yeah, yeah. There's uhh, small place up by the northern edge of town, by the main road in. Travel supply shop, you could find maps there."

He looked away for a moment, and then thought to add,

"Probably closed for the night, though."

Once again her eyes narrowed, and she looked side to side, thinking, though she never turned her front from the bartender. She should probably find somewhere to sleep, but she didn't really trust any of these people, not with how much they were looking at her. And food. She needed food. It had skipped her mind entirely after the doctor's diagnoses, so it was nearing two full days since she'd had anything of substance. But these people...They didn't look like ninjas, but the bartender was unusually calm talking to her, especially considering her experience with the spaz outside. She could tell if something was poisoned, but should she even give them the chance?

"Would you like a room?"

Her gaze shot back to the man in front of her with a scrutinous glare. His dumb mug stayed cheerful.

"What?"

He stated again as if she just didn't understand the question,

"A room. For sleeping. You look pretty worn down, and this is an inn as well as bar, yknow?"

"Of course I know. There's a sign."

That was a bluff. Why she felt need to lie about something that simple, not even knowing if the sign said that, she had no idea. He just laughed again. Is everyone around here just naturally creepy as hell? Is this how people are here? Loud, strange, and prone to getting on her nerves?

"Yeah, yeah! So, can I get you anything? A room, some food, a drink?"

He didn't wither a shred under her glare, and she could practically feel the other patrons watching her. She felt like...getting out of here as soon as possible to be honest. And this guy was way too happy to be offering free shit. Everything was making her feel so targeted here, but despite that it didn't really feel like any malice was directed towards her.

"...water?"

He picks up a glass and walks over to a pitcher filled with ice, set on the counter a few steps down. If it was out already, that was at least a good sign. He filled the glass quickly, and held it out in her direction.

What.

Did he think she would touch his hand taking it? Is that why he's offering her stuff? He's just desperate? He wants something? It was impossible to know for sure, but he seemed to get her hesitation in taking it, and placed it gently on the countertop. Her eyes shot to the glass for a second as she cautiously grabbed it, lifting it up to her lips. Her glare returned to the guy as she took a wary sip. It...seemed fine. It was water. Not harmful in any way, but it did make her realize how utterly thirsty she really was. She hadn't even thought about it for so long, she'd stopped paying attention. Didn't she already remind herself how important it was to stay in good condition right now? She swallowed the rest of the glass' contents in seconds, breathing heavily as placed the glass back down with a click.

The bartender looked calm and happy. Content with something, as he made to fill the glass again.

"Not too much too fast, y'hear?"

She nodded, not really looking at him. That was fine. It just got to her a second. She ran a hand over her hair as she pulled out a stool and sat at the counter. Her body suddenly felt exhausted, like it was being stressed beyond its limits, or like it hadn't properly rested in a week. Come to think of it, had she slept recently? Probably not. Mark down another thing that escaped her completely. Despite two days passing with nothing but time to think, it just now felt like she was getting her bearings.

"Food? Do you have food?"

Her words were ragged, but the guy didn't seem to mind, picking up a menu from under the counter and sliding it to her.

"Pick any one thing from here. On the house."

He moved away, turning back to some of the other customers as she stared down the printed paper in front of her.

Seriously? He could just do that? He _would_ just do that? Either he was trying to get her to lower her guard with the water, which was an arguable success, or her suspicions about the state of things around here were confirmed. It wasn't hard to notice that there wasn't anybody out on the street as night closed in on her walk here. No large amount of homeless, no people running through the streets taking semi-spoiled foodstuffs from the trash, nothing. Hidoku-Wanai was a thriving town. She'd never...seen one of those before. Mist had villages that made money, sure, but even the best of them was still filthy, and that money didn't go to many.

If the food here was clean, she wouldn't have to let slip the fact that she probably had enough to cover it and one night here. The fact that she must've looked terrible as she felt to elicit offerings of food and shelter was somewhat irking, but at least it didn't feel like the bartender, and owner by the sounds of it, was looking down on her for it. In addition to all that, she was just too tired to be pissed off right now. If this was charity, she was taking advantage of it to the fullest.

The menu was mostly fried foods; gyoza, tempura, takoyaki. All stuff that tried its hardest to scream "delicious", probably labeled by the flourished writing down the pages, and, luckily, pictures that looked way too enticing to be real. At least she knew some of the things in the pictures by name.

She could hear rustling from a room behind the bar, which she assumed to be the kitchen. A door to it was located behind the bars counter, a small shelf opened between the rooms where food must be passed through.

A minute passed and the bartender returned, taking her order of a plate of gyoza and passing it along to the cooks. She really hoped he wouldn't try to talk to her. That seemed like his style, but she wasn't up to dodging questions right now, so she leant down practically onto the counter, trying to look as unwilling to speak as possible.

Just enough attention was placed on her surroundings to make sure nobody tried anything. Her head was rested down in her arms; she couldn't see the food being made anyways, so better not to worry if it was drugged until it was out here.

The time passed surprisingly quick, though she was never able to fully drown out chatter of the rest of the bar and it was starting to become grating. A plate of food was slowly placed down with a clack in front of her while she was sipping her water quietly. Glancing up revealed the bartender's damn smile, and he nodded down at her. She returned the nod quickly, turning back to her plate of food.

It smelled delicious, and the moment she took a bite, she was elated to find that it tasted even better, way better than anything she'd had in Kiri. Warmth flooded into her as she ate, and over the next few minutes she'd found herself reenergized, hope renewed. In Mist, food doesn't come this fresh no matter who you are. A couple years back you could at least steal some of the better stuff, but lately everything that wasn't imported was just no good.

As she finished, Ringo realized what was bothering her most. The bartender hadn't asked her a single question. No clarifications, no "who are you", no "why are you here". Did he just assume something about her? Did he have some personal reason for giving away free meals to travelers?

She sure as hell wasn't gonna ask him.

However he decided to involve himself in her little predicament, his life was his and hers was hers. If he wanted to give away stuff, good for him, but she didn't want to be involved any more than getting it.

She sighed, head propped firmly on her palm. Her view drifted lazily to the man for a minute. He was chatting with a few other guys, looked like they knew him personally. Friends? Regulars? The silent watch continued until he looked over and met her eyes.

"...You said you were offering a room?"

"Mhm! One night shouldn't do much harm, should it?"

She thought it was rhetorical, but the way he was staring at her now made it seem like he was expecting a response.

'Guess this is his way of making me promise not to cause trouble?'

Fair enough, honestly. As much as she hated to admit it, the guy seemed to be helping her due to genuine kindness. Food, water, shelter. A promise not to trash his room was something she could manage.

"No, it shouldn't…"

Instantly, the sparkle returned to his look, and he practically lit up.

"Great! Gimme a sec, I'll get ya a key."

He fiddled with a key ring tied to his waist, getting mildly frustrated as he attempted to work one of the things off. It took him a minute, and the antics almost got her to smile at how stupidly endearing it was, but he eventually succeeded and proudly held the key out to her. Not even half a second ticked by before a soft "oh!" escaped his lips, and he set it down on the counter instead.

"Number on the key goes with the number on the door plates."

He nodded towards the corner of the bar.

"Stairs're over there, your room should be on the right side. Just don't leave with the key, and you're good."

Taking the key in her grip, Ringo stood and took a few steps towards the staircase. There wasn't much reason to stay down here, and it was way too loud for her. It was late. Didn't these people go to sleep? Did people in the Land of Fire not sleep? A second later, her stride paused, and she turned back to the man who'd helped her throughout the night. She was still under his roof, so she couldn't be sure it was selfless charity just yet, but he'd still given her quite a bit already.

"Uh...thanks."

He looked back at her, like he wasn't expecting her to say anything, and then he beamed that _stupid_ grin right at her-

She turned, pace much faster than before. Thanks out of the way, there was absolutely nothing keeping her down here, and suddenly she really wanted to be upstairs instead of receiving that dopey smile for another second.

The second floor was...neat. No dust, no litter, and the stairs and floor only mildly creaked as she stood on them. The room was easy to find, even she could match numbers, and as she opened the door she found that it was pretty much as expected. It wasn't large, just a few basics and necessities. Simple. Clean. A bathroom, which she immediately decided to make use of, and a bed that was lifted off the ground by a leg on each corner.

The door had both a lock and latch. Not nearly enough to stop anyone serious about entering, but it calmed her mind to know that anyone who opened the door would be a threat to cut down without worry.

It was quite the nice feeling having a room to herself, however temporary it was. Finally having privacy as well as belongings made for quite the calming combination, and the idea of a bath was like heaven right now. She probably needed it, anyways.

She disrobed, placing her clothing on a shelf attached to the wall and propping the Kiba against the wooden basin within reach. Her clothes probably needed washing too, but she could handle that later. While the tub was filling with hot water, she sat on the small stool by the room's drain, filling a bucket and pouring it over herself. She could practically _feel_ the dirt coming off of her. She needed this more than she thought she did.

Once the tub was full, she allowed herself to fully relax in the soak. There was no way around it, indulgences like this were _niiiiice_. It was as if she was melting into the water. Good, clean, hot water! With how filthy the stuff usually was in Mist, it would've been easy to hate the idea of something like submerging herself in it no matter the quality, but sparkling clear water had always relaxed her. For a brief moment, her thoughts drifted to the dumb little pond she fondly claimed outside Kirigakure's walls. In Fire Country, clean water seemed like a commodity rather than an essential piece of survival, spilling out of faucets like it's as common as air itself. There was a joke in Kiri that the Land of Hot Springs' borders actually stretched half the continent, and now she fully understood the humor behind it.

It was easy to stop worrying in the water, but her bliss was sharply interrupted by a particularly bad cramp gripping her abdomen. She stood quickly, grunting in effort. Drying off was a pain, redressing was agony, and by the time she finished she'd barely picked up her swords when she threw herself onto the bed.

The filling sense of freedom and joy at arriving in the new land was washed away with the rising moon while Ringo laid in the small tidy bedroom, clutching her stomach as aches pulsed through her front.

More than anything else, now that she was once again left alone with her thoughts despite the wondrous luxuries around to distract her, she was afraid. She didn't know all the details of her condition after all, and it had forced itself to the forefront of her mind. The fear of just rolling over and ending up dead at any moment was a strong one. As well, now that it was properly nighttime, she made the annoying discovery that going to sleep was a nightmare itself, far worse than anything she could dream up after she did. Once she closed her eyes it was impossible to know, even if she felt she had some time left, if she'd wake up again. It was a stupid thing to fear, but this whole situation was stupid. The illness, the search, the damn _pain_ it had her in. Letting the irritation sour her mood, she laid there, swords in hand.

Tired as she was, there wasn't much rest to be had as the night passed on in silence, listening for any sign of intruders and waiting for her chance to begin the search for Tsunade in earnest.

* * *

AN: Editing is very very tough with a cat that loves to climb onto my shoulder, and another that keeps trying to _push my laptop off my desk so I'll pay attention to him_.  
All my cats are attention hogs.

Big big thanks to everyone still reading after the first arc! This is the story that got me writing in the first place, and it means a lot to me to have y'all along for the ride.  
Hope you can continue to enjoy it, cause theres a bunch more to come!

See you in two weeks! Sending good vibes out your way! Have a good one, yo


	6. Beyond Mist: Part 2

'I was _right.'_

That was the thought that flew through her mind alongside so many others, brought to life by the shuffling outside of her hotel room's door.

'That bartender couldn't be trusted.' 'The people here are dangerous.' 'I wasn't being too careful at all.' Her mind was swimming, hands wrapped tightly around the hilts of her blades, body tensed and ready. And then…

It was quiet. Steps sounded out, padding slowly down the hall, muffled laughter coming from what sounded like two people getting quieter and quieter. Minutes passed by in silence.

...nothing? Nothing!? Every sound, every voice, every indication that something was going on throughout the _entire_ night kept resulting in NOTHING. Was she paranoid? No, no way. Ringo was a famous swordswoman and a high ranking kunoichi from Kiri, gone traitor and turned up in a different country. There was no 'too careful' about this. Still, caution being the only thing to think about until the sun rose was maddening. Every time the floor creaked, she was ready to decapitate anyone who dared open her door.

The sun was slow to come up, and Ringo was more than ready to leave. She'd need to sleep sometime but tonight wasn't the night for it, and the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a bad idea to rest now anyways. If Mist did assume she'd left the village and wasn't simply missing, they'd send hunter nins to catch her and either bring her back, or bring back her head. Right along the coast of a wealthy neighboring country? More than likely to be in the immediate search area. She was possibly a full day's worth of travel ahead of them if that was indeed the case, but it would still be a good idea to move further inland at the first opportunity. As soon as the travel shop the bartender mentioned opened, she would get her supplies and leave.

When the time finally came, light raising over the ocean and signaling the town to begin its daily work, she was more than a little anxious to get out of the inn. Which was an endeavor in and of itself.

Perhaps it _was_ a bit overdoing 'careful', but she didn't want to open her room's door. Fine as she was now, there was shuffling outside a few times in the night, and risking a trap as stupidly obvious as "wait behind door" would be foolish beyond belief. Rather, she cautiously made her way to the entrance, Kiba in hand, and undid the locks, slowly retreating backwards towards the bed. She gently placed her key in the center of the sheets, then moved over to the room's window, forcing it open with a protesting squeak.

She dropped down from the second floor onto the soft grass below, landing with a thud in a low crouch. Looking around, the streets were far from empty, but most of the morning commotion seemed to emanate from the docks. The vast majority of them were probably readying to sail, and paid her no mind while she wandered towards the northern part of town, following the largest road she could see.

Not much time passed until she found the road connecting Hidoku-Wanai to the outside world, and, sure enough, a small shop was placed right along the edge, just before the thick dirt and gravel path met dense forest. A few words were etched above the doorway, likely declaring the store's name.

Immediately upon walking in, a soft chime ringing from a few bells attached to the door, it was clear that everything on display was of good quality. Equipment, heavy travel clothes, ration bars, anything you'd need to get around on foot. And lining up the walls anywhere there wasn't a shelf...maps. Perfect.

'It ain't bad in here.'

As she looked around the walls, figuring which map was of what, a head popped up from behind the counter, and an energetic voice called out to her.

"Oop! Welcome! You're here pretty early! Just opened the doors a few minutes ago!"

Oh. He was...loud.

'How can someone with such a soft voice be so _noisy?'_

Small, too. He looked even shorter than herself, freckled, with hair curled and bushy as a rabbit's tail. As well, he seemed absolutely overjoyed for no reason whatsoever. Ringo was quickly coming to terms with the fact that everyone in Fire Country was...unique. But those _smiles_ were rapidly becoming extraordinarily disturbing.

"Ah. Yeah."

Her terse response didn't throw the man off at all. Chipper as before, he maneuvered out from behind the counter and skipp-he SKIPPED. The guy _skipped_ over to her, prancing like he was in a field of _daisies_.

"Welcome to Mono's! Need a thing or two? I got 'em!~"

This man was easily scarier than anyone she'd ever encountered in Mist. What was this? Was this...psychological warfare? She could already feel the beginnings of a migraine form just from looking at the bright aura he exuded, and was filled with a need to avert her eyes. Maybe that was it.

Or maybe this town was utterly insane. There must be something in the water here. Quickly, she found herself regretting drinking two glasses of the stuff at the bar. And then even more so...bathing in it. If that was some kind of indoctrination...

She shivered. That wasn't something she ever wanted to think about.

"Name's Muryō Mono, and welcome to the drifter's paradise! Can I help you with anything?~ Looking for something in particular?"

The ache in her head worsened with each word that left his mouth, and the way he looked at her made it seem like he was eagerly awaiting a smile in return. Maybe she'd already died and gone to hell.

"I need a map. Of Fire Country."

Thankfully, after stating her business, he settled and seemed to take on a more professional attitude.

"Map, huh? I got maps! Looking for the whole of the place? Main roads, provinces?"

The following minutes were a pain filled with questions about what she was looking for and clipped responses of affirmation or corrections from her. The man would take out different maps of the region, and after looking them over herself, she'd roll them up and tuck them under an arm.

She had to admit, as much as she feared this man from the depths of her soul, Mono had a good amount of information. She had four maps showing the roads and village locations of different areas of the Land of Fire, covering essentially every area by the time he finished going through them. He even mentioned areas of interest just in passing, likely trying to make conversation. Because he couldn't just let it be _silent_ for a second. Though, his pointing everything out on the maps _was_ helpful, letting her silently place names to various points of the country. She'd keep that to herself, however.

"So, what are you traveling around for?"

"Mm."

Well, this was as good a time as ever to ask, and he seemed to be knowledgeable about Fire Country. A name as famous as her target's shouldn't be hard. She still couldn't bring herself to look him in his bright and shiny eyes, however, focused instead on some food bars that looked decent. Fruit and nuts, maybe? She grabbed a handful and decided to ask what she came here for.

"I'm looking for Tsunade of the Sannin. Do you know where she might be?"

"Ahhh, Tsunade huh? Now there's a name! And what brings her into the spotlight here?"

His tone had become...cautious. He was watching her intently, like he wouldn't answer if he didn't get a response he approved of, or if he thought she was lying. People probably tried to find others for some nasty reasons all the time, and her foreign clothing likely didn't invoke a picture of innocence.

"Personal. Nothing ill intentioned. I just need her help with something."

It was entirely true, and that seemed enough to placate him after a moment of consideration. Mono hummed in thought, leaning against one of the shop's walls.

"Wellll...I can't say I know where she is right _now_ , but Tsunade has a couple notorious tells to her whereabouts. First off…"

He pushed off the wall with a grunt, bringing his hands up, moving them animatedly as he spoke.

"Never a smaller village. Not enough in any of them to hold her interest. She goes back and forth between most of the bigger places. And the second factor that matters...Gambling!"

Oh. There was something in the bingo books about that, wasn't there? Perhaps Ringo should've read through Tsunade's page again before coming here.

"The bigger the gambling town, the more likely she is to turn up there, and she'll likely have been to it before. Little hint for you, closest gambling spot is Sonzaishinai, riiiight…"

He walked over to one of the maps on the wall, looking it over for a moment before pressing his finger on a marking a little further away from the coast.

"Here!"

Well. Damn. This was far more helpful than she ever could've expected, honestly. People in Hidoku-Wanai gave information and aid out like candy. Ringo looked at the map a little stunned, and actually managed a sharp smirk. Maybe this guy wasn't too bad once he got down to business.

"Huh. Thanks."

"No problem at all!"

He eyed the contents in her hand, still gripping onto the food bars she'd found.

"Ah, if you need supplies, you should probably take some water, too. I have-"

Her smile vanished as her head whirled towards him, and for the first time since deciding the man was some enigmatic evil in human form, she looked him in the eyes, glaring harshly.

" _NO."_

He stopped mid sentence, clamping his mouth shut with a click and bringing up his hands in a show of surrender. Ringo grumbled, angrily reaching into her pants for her wallet. Modesty be damned, that comment clinched it; she wanted out of here no matter how much this guy knew. She took out a few small bills, not bothering to count the amount, crumpling them in her fist and dropping them on the counter. She didn't want to pay this guy, not at all, and his whole "I am super friendly and harmless" demeanor practically _screamed_ "free stuff" to anyone who wanted to just come in, grab things, and walk out. However, he did give her a lot of good info, more than enough to get started right away, and she didn't want to get in _too_ much trouble with law enforcement in this country.

She stomped towards the door and Mono called after her.

"Ah...ma'am? This uh, this isn't, enough."

"Burn in hell."

She slammed the door shut behind her, heavy clack tearing through the street. Finding herself incredibly thankful the road out of this place was right under her feet already, she started into the forest, soothing her hot temper with the sweet fact that she'd never have to come back here again. She wouldn't have to meet any of those people _ever_ again. With any luck, other places would be more normal, and this town was just a freak accident.

After a few minutes of walking she was surrounded entirely by thick forest vegetation, and looking back, the town was completely behind her and out of sight. She slowed, sighing. With that burst of energy gone, she was...tired. Exhausted even.

What caused that? Her state of mind? She already knew her usual playful and taunting mood had plummeted down into the dirt when she first learned of her illness' severity, but was that why she was constantly tired lately? Was it just the situation wearing on her, or was it the condition itself? It could be that it was sapping her energy more and more now that it was worsening.

...or it could be the lack of sleep.

Or all three. That was entirely possible. Maybe she'd get a bit of her spark back when she could stop feeling her insides being slowly destroyed.

'Heh...spark...'

She chuckled, running her free hand over the handle of one of her swords. At least she was well enough to entertain herself.

Besides! When this plan worked out, _then_ she could start on the _good_ things around here. Strange as the people were so far, the land was prosperous. Secure her health, know that she'd stay safe, then the fun could begin.

...Now that she'd calmed down, she sincerely hoped that Mono guy wouldn't try to get her into legal trouble.

...Or come after her himself. She got the feeling he was a lot more than he let on. Her anxiety and frustration had just boiled over for a moment with that... _water_ comment. She'd likely have to watch her temper a bit more closely from now on. Blowing up at random people who smiled at her wouldn't be good for a stealthy search.

Setting a pace much faster than she'd used when walking to the coastal town, Ringo followed the path on the map. A few munched food bars later, and she'd reached Sonzaishinai before it was even noon. It wasn't the largest place, but it was easy to see why it was notable in her search; the gambling hall was right smack in the middle of the place and seemed to be its main attraction.

As well, it was fairly obvious that people here stared at her. They cleared out of her way, and most would turn if she looked in their direction. Thank Kami they didn't look like they'd scream and wet themselves like _someone_ she'd met, but it was much more of a group reaction. There wasn't a single person here that looked at her kindly. Some clearly had more...malice than others, but they were all wary.

Not that it was a bad thing, necessarily. She was here for information, not to be a crowd pleaser.

'Though…' Ringo noted, 'if there are ninja stationed in this town, it could lead to some problems.'

She'd likely be questioned, and there weren't any answers safe to give. She betrayed Mist and was smuggled here? Leaf ninja wouldn't just drop that, nor would they accept "I'm trying to find Tsunade of the Sannin because I want to." Her affairs from now on would have to be quieter. She should probably get a new outfit too, but...Eh. She liked this getup, and she was more than skilled enough to skulk around a bit.

As it turned out, nobody here was willing to let anything slip without asking for something in return for it. It was hard to believe that this place was so close to Hidoku-Wanai with how stingy everyone was, but on some level this was comforting. She was used to dealing with a lack of cooperation. She couldn't threaten anyone, not if she wanted to remain discreet, so in the end she bribed one of the casino's owners with money from his own wallet. It was easy to take and there wasn't much guilt in pocketing the rest.

The information wasn't anything too exciting; Tsunade hadn't been by here in nearly a year. It did, however, at least reveal a trail. After coming here, she'd apparently made a sharp turn to the north of the country, towards one of the largest villages in the province that wasn't Konoha itself. That was...a bit of a problem. She couldn't get too close to the Hidden Village. However many Leaf ninja were around other regions of the Land of Fire, around Konoha the amount would multiply. There's no way she could get in the area undetected, let alone move past it to her next destination.

Luckily, with a bit more asking and a few more stolen bills passed around, Ringo was able to mark down the major gambling towns of the country. Marking the map with the Sannin's last appearance in the area and drawing out the path she took, it was easy enough to figure out where she'd probably gone afterwards. Everyone had been quite sure that the medic never stayed in one place long, so with almost a year of slow going travel between them, it was fairly safe to assume she was gone from the area by now. Ringo could catch her path again in a spot not quite as near the Leaf Village and carry on from there, further along the trail than could be done simply by following each step.

When the time to leave Sonzaishinai had come, she had quite the haul of information under her sash. It was...almost shocking how clear and concise the info they had on Tsunade was, and it wasn't until she'd heard the woman's nickname that she figured out why they bothered to keep her path and every encounter on record.

'The Legendary Sucker.'

She had assumed that a woman as legendary as the Sannin would be good at whatever hobby she picked up. That had been _oh so_ wrong. Tsunade, legendary Konoha medical specialist and last of the Senju, was _terrible._ Every stop she made, fortunes were made in the pockets of the house, and she collected debts like Amegakure collected rainwater. The gambling areas kept each other _well_ aware of her movements.

A smile slowly crept onto Ringo's face as she passed beneath Sonzaishinai's village gates. Having gotten all the information she could from this place, it was time to start the final part of her search. _Find_ the damn woman. She had a trail to follow, now she just had to play catch up. A bit more effort, and she'd be in Tsunade's care in no time.

* * *

The move towards the northwest of Fire Country was going fairly quickly, though not as fast as Ringo may have liked. As much as she hated to recognize it, she'd become slower than she was not so long ago when she'd first left Kiri, and that fact shook her no matter how little she attempted to dwell on it.

It was absolute, undeniable proof that she was deteriorating, and that her illness truly was as bad as she'd been told. Pain, she could handle; she was used to pain. It was a part of her process, how she learned and improved, how she _lived_. She could work through pain. But now, this was affecting her skills, forcing her to acknowledge the truth of the situation.

She was being eaten away at.

It was all of her fears in a form she couldn't disregard; the way she tired easier, how little time it took for her breathing to become ragged, how she'd sometimes be forced to stop traveling entirely from the wrenching that grabbed at her guts like a vice grip until her body couldn't even function before the bout of feeling passed. It was as if the illness was punishing her for ignoring it so long, now showing itself in an unmissable display of spite, jumping in front of her face at every turn as if to say "notice me now?"

It was infuriating.

Still, despite her health, Ringo was still an S rank shinobi. She was in no danger of something as silly as a bandit raid, or poisoning herself with the local fauna, however unfamiliar the territory around her was. So the very idea that she could fail her mission simply because she _expired_ , just withered away on the side of a road, it was- it was maddening.

Her teeth clenched, sandals clacking loud against the dirt path beneath her. The sun had set some time ago, but she'd chosen to forego a night of sleep in favor of continued, albeit slowed, travel to make up for the time lost from her lowered pace.

She didn't delude herself with the idea that maybe she'd simply find Tsunade the moment she reached the northwestern borders of the country. Once she picked back up the trail the Sannin will have left in a wake of drinking and gambling debts, she'd still have more distance to cover, and Kami knows how much that could actually be.

So she had to keep moving. Through the pain, through the exhaustion, through the unusual heat and wooziness, and especially through the sudden dizziness that was making everything blur and spin and- oh, shit.

Her steps slowed quickly to a stop, though the world kept moving around her in a disorienting display of fuzziness. Trees melted together into an undefinable mess for more reason that just the darkness of night, even the ground beneath her feet refusing to still, spinning and resetting itself over and over again as she tried to maintain her balance.

This was new. Alongside the cloudiness in her head came a wave of fatigue, a sudden weariness that slowly drowned out her senses until there was nothing left but a bizarre spinning. And then, all at once, it began to _hurt_. Her head was gripped hard by an ache that refused to let go, piercing through her skull like a knife.

Some thirty yards away was a small roadside inn, one of many that dotted civilian pathways around the country. The odds of someone being awake at this ungodly hour were slim, but all she needed was a place to rest until this passed.

Somewhere, deep in the back of her mind, there was a festering fear that maybe this _wouldn't_ pass. The pain from her disease had never spread far from her center, and certainly never to her head.

Those thoughts were promptly shoved aside, laid to rest behind the sight of the inn she trudged towards. It only took two tries to properly grab the handle of the worn wooden door to the building, stumbling in with heavy thunks against the floorboards, bracing herself with a hand on the front counter.

She was inside. Just a minute, that was all she needed. Just a minute to catch her breath, to-

Suddenly, the room was awash with light; bright and terrible disorienting light alongside a few heavy thumps by the stairway on the side of the room, a low pitched feminine voice calling out a wary "Hello...? Is someone here?"

A woman trudged cautiously down the last stair, peeking around the corner to meet Ringo's eyes, squinted in focus as sweat dripped down her forehead. The woman was incredibly plain, probably around forty or so, and obviously civilian by way of clothing and the clear surprise in her expression. For a brief moment, Ringo thought she might panic and flee, but-...well, she did begin panicking, throwing off all sense of caution to run over to her side, asking question after question.

"Are you alright!? Are you injured!? Oh, oh, dear, just a moment I'll, I'll get my son, um-"

Either Ringo was too slow to wave her off, or she was deliberately ignoring every feeble attempt of hers to do so, possibly due to her exhausted sputtering as she tried to piece together a string of coherent words as everything jumbled together in her head. Nevertheless, the woman ran to the stairs and shouted up, "DOKKU!", quickly returning to Ringo's side.

She was likely talking more, asking more questions about her condition, but her voice was quickly being drowned out by a ringing that filled Ringo's ears. Every thought she had was becoming less and less aware, and her stomach swirled as if she was either about to die or throw up. Her knees buckled, sinking her close to the ground, head resting in her arms against the counter she'd been using to stand.

Slowly, so very slowly, everything began to recede. The ringing quieted, and her vision slowly returned with her breathing, deep and methodical.

As well, she could hear the alarmed concern from the middle aged mother crouched beside her, shouting something to her son, who'd plodded- in just his boxers, she might add- down the stairs to see what was going on.

"-ku, yes, call a doctor please, I don't know what- I-"

The moment she heard the word doctor, Ringo decided it was time to put a stop to their impromptu care.

Once she was sure the world had properly settled back into place around her, she tried to stand with a grunt, slowly pushing herself up using the counter and-

"Oh, no no no, whoa, dear, please no, it's- are you-"

"Fine- I'm, I'm alright."

The pursed lips the woman, likely the innkeeper, was giving her was a clear indication that she didn't believe her for a second. Taking a deep breath to compose herself now that she was standing, Ringo turned to face her properly.

"Ma'am. Could I, uh- could I trouble you for a room? I can uh, I can pay, I-"

Immediately, the woman's concern returned, somehow even stronger than before.

"Dear, are you- are you sure? We can get a doctor if- if you-"

Ringo waved an arm tiredly in front of her, weakly explaining, "No, I'm fine. I just- need proper rest. I apologize for troubling you like this."

The woman was placated well enough, though she absolutely insisted on helping Ringo to a room, calling for her son to assist as well. The boy, likely still a young teenager- and STILL in just his boxers, moved towards Ringo to take one of her arms. The moment he was beside her, reaching for her, she took a step back, fixing him with a scrutinizing look that traveled down and back up to meet his eyes. Slowly, very very slowly, he came to the realization.

"...Ah! AH! I-i'm sorry, I- uh- um-"

Ringo shook her head, taking a few steps forward with the innkeeper's help, only mildly shaky now as the worst of the feeling passed.

* * *

The morning was substantially better than the night, Ringo decided. All of the cloudiness and freaky headaches were gone, peace of mind being delivered with the morning light. In fact, she felt...not terrible. Mostly. Which, honestly, was an accomplishment all considering. The only thing was a scratching in her throat and chest, which was decidedly not _nearly_ as bad a state as she'd been in the night before.

She was rested. However frightening that experience had been, she was alright now. Ringo roused from the bed, shaking herself awake, rubbing a hand against her jaw to wipe off the drool on her chin. Idly, she brushed her hand against her clothing to see the-...the red drool.

Her head whipped back to look at the sheets she'd rested on to see dark, dried specks of red splattered across the blankets and pillow, scattered and staining.

Blood. She was coughing up blood now. Great! GREAT! A fantastic sign!

And once the inn's matriarch caught sight of this, she'd NEVER let it go without calling a doctor, and-

Ringo couldn't deal with this. She'd hoped to stay for a meal, but the sight of her blood staining the bed she laid in brought on the overwhelming need to start moving once again.

Her wallet dropped onto the bed; there was enough left in it to pay for her costs and damages, and she moved towards the rooms window, preparing for the increasingly familiar method of exit from Fire Country inns. With a pained grunt, she dropped onto the grass from her second floor room, ready to continue her search. She was running out of time. There wasn't enough to waste resting here.

* * *

It took about another week to reach the village she was moving towards, nestled cozily against the northwestern border, but she was happy to find that the trail she was following was much warmer than her previous stop. She'd managed to gather a great deal more information about the Sannin; she'd known already that she traveled with a companion, but there was a stunning lack of clear detail about who or why. Now, she'd learned that the companion was an apprentice, a young woman apparently related to her in some way. And the most important thing she'd learned...

Tsunade was there about two and a half months ago, and left due south.

She didn't even bother spending another minute at the place; the anticipation was getting her far too excited to sit still no matter how much her body begged for rest. This was working. She was well on her way to finding the one woman in the world who could help her. She would be ok if she just kept _moving_.

Unfortunately, she could no longer risk another maneuver like her first shortcut across the country or it would be possible to overshoot and lose the trail completely. For now, it was simply following from village to village and hoping her pace would be fast enough to reach her target soon. Now that she was closer, she had to move as fast as possible. If Tsunade cut back east for whatever reason, she'd once again be in the vicinity of the Hidden Leaf Village. It was at least comforting that the woman herself seemed to be avoiding traveling too close to Konoha, but she could still pass near it without problem. Ringo could not. If she drew back too close to the Hidden Village, it would leave her with only guesswork on where to go next.

That encouragement brought her to push herself all the harder.

Over the next month of travel, village hopping along the country's western borders, the cough that had plagued her in her earlier years had slowly returned, and this time it stuck, sometimes accompanied with flecks of blood. Whereas her chest had previously been only an occasional source of pain, her lungs had begun to feel scratched and strained almost constantly. The pace she'd managed to hold was forced to slow more at every stop, and it was worrying her. If she came all this way and couldn't catch Tsunade now...

She pushed on closer to the southern coast.

Slowly but surely, her quarry was nearing, and there wasn't any time to waste.

* * *

Tanzaku Town

(Tsunade)

'One last pull...I've got a good feeling about this one…'

The slot machine's handle was slick with sweat, and pulled down easily in a practiced motion; one that had been performed thousands of times until it attained a perfected ease. The slots whirled and blurred as the all too familiar tune of the game encompassed her.

*bing!*

7 read clearly in the first slot. This was it.

*bing!*

Two 7's! Tsunade glared at the final space, willing it to stop.

*bin-SMASH*

Before the cherry could even finish taking its space in the third slot, the machine was shattered, impacted directly in the center by the Sannin's fist, broken bits of metal flying around her as a wrenching crunch consumed the casino. Shizune shrieked behind her.

'This machine is _rigged_.'

She was seething. How long had she been here!? All this time, all of those pulls, and she gained absolutely _nothing_. It HAD to be rigged.

A few seconds passed in stillness while the utter destruction of her slot machine quieted, scraps and pieces of it still falling to the floor in a flurry of clinks and bangs. Once the atmosphere calmed into silence, she turned with a violent huff and stormed towards the door.

"L-lady Tsunade!"

She didn't spare Shizune a glance, stomping past her as the girl tried to get her to stop. She looked utterly helpless, and the Casino's owner coughed beside her, letting her apprentice know she wouldn't be escaping without establishing some monetary recompense. Add the debt to the pile. Shizune would have to catch up back at the hotel.

Nobody dared stand in the way of Tsunade's march, quickly moving back to the room she'd gotten just outside of the city's walls. The roads were illuminated by streetlights, and it was quiet save the hum from the casino and the harsh cracks of her sandals against the ground.

Tanzaku Town was a _bust_. This town brought on the worst luck she'd had in ages! She'd stayed here for so long, figuring that something good must be just around the corner with how utterly terrible every try had been, but each morning brought nothing but more failure.

'This town is like a host of bad luck.'

Maybe she'd come back here in a few years, but for now it was far past time to get the hell out. Nothing good _ever_ seemed to happen here.

When she'd finally reached the hotel, she went straight to her room and threw her haori to the floor, laying back on the bed and sighing as a still quiet fell over her.

"...This place _sucks_."

It was a good half hour of blissful silence until Shizune finally burst into the room, still frantic.

"Lady Tsunade! You can't- you can't do things like that!"

She was about to get lectured. Fantastic. She rolled onto her side, back to her student.

"Ugh. Be quiet…"

"Wh-No! No I will not be _quiet!"_

Uuuugh. Now she was angry. The girl was out of Tsunade's view, but it wasn't hard at all to picture her right now. She'd put down Tonton, would curl in on herself angrily, and exclaim "You need to listen to me here!" with her hands balled into fists at her sides.

*tap*

"Oink..."

"You need to listen to me here!"

Easy.

"I'd rather not…"

She could hear Shizune practically shake in her displeasure, but instead of more yelling she sighed, breathing a few slow and deep breaths. She was going for the sentimental route this time.

It was going to be a long night, huh? Why couldn't she just be allowed to sleep...?

* * *

(Ringo)

More than two full months had passed since Ringo first set foot in the Land of Fire, and she was getting desperate for clear progress. She figured when she left Kiri that there was at least a year left in her, but when the doctor in Mist told her it would get worse quickly, he _meant_ it.

Currently, she was lying on a bed in another roadside inn. She'd needed to rest just a bit, no matter how much she wanted to continue. The past two weeks had been astoundingly terrible on her health.

Breathing had become a painful experience at all times, and her chest felt raw with every cough. Simply taking in air was a chore now, and it was one that required constant attention. Any exertion at all and her breaths would become heavy and labored, leaving her panting.

The worry that filled her was beginning to boil over. She'd remained about a week behind Tsunade for the past three stops. That was almost the worst possible scenario, simply being unable to move fast enough, however close she came. She couldn't...if she couldn't reach her soon, she would die. Until now she'd been able to delude herself with the escape the Sannin offered; she'd be fine because there was a way out. She wouldn't fail when there was a clear way to get through it.

Now...now she was faced with the very real possibility that she might not find her in time, and she was angry. Furious that she was letting herself come this far just to drop dead. This whole thing...

It was terrifying.

She stared at the wooden ceiling above her bed, trying to quell her coughing fit. Once she was strong enough to move again, she'd leave immediately.

Every cough wracked her body, and combined with the burning sensations now constantly accompanying her in her abdomen. It was a disturbingly harsh experience. And this one...this seemed the worst yet.

She covered her mouth with her hands, letting the ordeal run its course until something wet smacked against her palm. She lifted them weakly, blinking away the blur in her vision.

'Blood.'

More blood. This was becoming a common symptom, and certainly not a good sign.

A shot of anger brought on by the sight of her blood tensed her body, which quickly brought on more coughs. After the brief rage left her, she once again felt...empty. She couldn't...she couldn't actually die here, could she?

"...hell no."

She wouldn't let that happen.

Pushing herself up with a pained grunt, bloody hand propping against the bedsheets, Ringo forced herself to stand. She was far too afraid of death to just lay down and _let_ this happen.

Shuffling her way out of the inn and back onto the road, she began on what could be the final stretch of her search. The road to Tanzaku Town was long, but she could do it, she was sure. She could probably even reach it before morning if she pushed her luck a bit. Besides, if Ringo didn't go all out now, it would all be for nothing.

Tsunade was close. If she pushed herself as hard as possible now to catch up, she could reach her. Then it wouldn't matter how much trouble she put herself in; she would have help.

It was a gamble.

This was her final gambit, putting up her life as the bet.

* * *

Inn outside Tanzaku Town

(Tsunade)

Tsunade woke suddenly, before the sun had even risen. She'd barely had five hours of rest after Shizune finally stopped nagging her, but now…

Something felt wrong.

She had a...feeling. A bad feeling? Good feeling? It was hard to tell, but it sure as hell wasn't normal. That was concerning.

Years of experience of being a ninja as well as a gambler had taught her that her instincts were often right, and at the moment her instincts were screaming that something was about to happen.

She stood quickly, throwing on her coat and briskly moving to the door, shaking Shizune on her way. The girl looked up groggily, Tonton cuddled against her stomach.

"Whhh...Lady Tsunade...?"

"We're leaving."

Her student's eyes opened fully as she sat up and shook herself awake, taken off guard by the sudden declaration.

"What? Wait, what-what time is it?"

She glanced between Tsunade and the window, scrambling to stand as her teacher marched into the hall and towards the staircase.

"L-lady Tsunade, wait! Did something happen!?"

She didn't answer. Something _wouldn't_ happen, not if she could help it. And if something did, she'd beat the hell out of it until it _stopped_ happening.

But if it was something else...something like a debt collector, or...

Well then she'd have to move fast.

That was a headache she did not want to deal with right now.

* * *

(Ringo)

Tanzaku Town was surprisingly small for all the attention it attracted, something that Ringo found herself hugely thankful for as she shuffled through it. Information was easy to gather because there was only a few places to ask, and she didn't have to walk very far for any of it.

And information...

She was right to come here as quickly as possible. For whatever reason, Tsunade had stayed here for quite a long time, and many claimed she'd been in the casino just last night. If she was still here, and if she could find the place she was staying...

She went from hotel to hotel asking for the woman, but she hadn't stayed at any of the places closest to the gambling hall. Asking was getting annoying; every time she stopped to talk to _anybody_ they would ask if she was ok and try to sit her down.

It must have been horrifically obvious how bad a shape she was in. The exertion from this last leg of the search weighed on her back like a mountain. She was sweating terribly, and her breathing was shallow and erratic. A few people even mentioned she looked pale, so there was yet _another_ thing to worry about.

Still, she just had to push through for one last night...just this last night and she'd be ok.

She'd checked the entire town, and almost doubled back thinking she'd missed something when someone had informed her there was a small hotel on one of the larger roads leading to Tanzaku.

When she finally reached the place, she felt the very real risk of collapsing at any moment, her hand clutching her chest, trying to push down the static stings that coursed through it. Rather than fully enter, she bashed the door open with her shoulder and leaned against the doorway, locking eyes with a girl behind the check in counter.

"You!"

The girl 'eep!'d, looking nervous.

"U-uh, yes ma'am? C-can I help y-"

"Is Tsunade here?"

She looked from side to side, as if she wasn't sure she could answer that.

"Um, I-"

Kami, there wasn't TIME for this!

"Tsunade of the Sannin, is she staying here!?"

"S-she was, yes! She um, she just left not even ten minutes ago..."

Ringo's eyes widened. Ten minutes. Tsunade was less than ten minutes away.

"She was moving down the main road, away from town...I think she-"

Ringo bolted from the doorway. Finally. _Finally_. This road went straight for miles. She would catch her here! Everything began to fade. The burning, the exhaustion, every weary ache and pain left her mind as adrenaline poured into her tired muscles, spurring her forward faster than she'd been able to run in weeks.

Her swords padded against her side as she ran, and a toothy smile creeped onto her face. She was _giddy!_ She would be free from this damn disease, she would be able to live out her life, to find what she wanted to live for and take it too!

'I'm going to be ok!'

She almost felt like crying. She nearly felt free from everything that ailed her already!

Her sandals were loud against the path, but she couldn't bring herself to care for subtlety. Not now.

Barely two minutes of running had gone by when she saw something in the distance take shape as she neared it. Two figures.

She ran faster and failed to hold in a barking laugh as they came into proper view. A green coat. Blonde hair. A girl stood next to her in black.

Ringo gathered as much energy as she could, and didn't even try to stop herself from shouting,

"HEEEY!"

Her voice echoed across the stretch of road, and the green coated woman stopped dead in her tracks. The younger girl who could only be her assistant turned around completely, looking at her. A few seconds passed while Ringo continued towards them, and the taller woman looked back over her shoulder.

Ringo's smile widened, her excitement clear in her eyes.

"Finally…" she whispered in a breath as gravelly as the road she stood on.

There was no longer any doubt.

She'd found them.

* * *

AN: Whoaaaa happy decemmmmberrrrrr! Welcome to the biggest chapter in this fic to date, at about 7.5k words of story, and breaking the 30k mark for the fic's total!  
Definitely glad I switched to every other week updates, because there's no way I could do this weekly. That said, there's a lot of moments I really enjoyed in this one, and I'm feeling good about the progression of it. Next chapter is a, uh. Well. It's certainly a big big important one. Had to do a _lot_ of research for it.

By the way, did y'all know Tsunade is _super_ fun to write? Because she is. No matter what scene, no matter what fic, writing her is always an absolute joy.

I'll see you all in two weeks! Have a good one, and I'm sending out good vibes to each and every one of ya.

xxx

 **hanami cascade** \- Aw shoosh, thanks! That all means a whole bunch to me! I think that I'm doing a character justice is the best compliment I can receive. :D I'll be sure to update whenever I can. Glad you're enjoying the story, and I hope you can stick around for more!

 **Burkinator** \- Whether or not she'd been out of Mist before was actually a pretty big point of contention when I was writing! In the end, I thought it would just be a better story if she'd been kept in Mist till that point, but it was definitely close as to whether or not that would be the case. Plausible enough considering the state of Kiri and its canon policies, and I felt like it added enough to the character to be the way to go. It's something that'll definitely be touched on more in the future. Thanks for reading, I'm glad you could find enjoyment in this story! And, as for whether or not there'll be anymore gritty stuff, I can guarantee there will be. Not an every chapter thing, but it'll definitely be used to the best of my ability.

 **IronIolite** \- Can I say your enthusiasm made my week? Cause it did. You single handedly made me twice as excited for this update, so thank you a ton and a half! And high five for shared seven swordsmen favorites! Hope you can stick around, cause there's lots more to come!


	7. Restoration: Part 1

AN: This fic's always been teetering on the edge, but, just to be safe, I'm moving its rating to M with this chapter. If you're squeamish or easily disturbed, you'll want to stop reading towards the latter end of this. As well, there's a very brief suicide mention.

All that said, please enjoy, and I'll see you again at the end of the chapter.

* * *

She was golden, more so than the morning light that shone down on her as the sun began to rise over the tree line around them. Beautiful in every literal and figurative sense.

Finally, Tsunade of the Sannin, Ringo's greatest chance at life, stood just yards away, meeter her eyes over her shoulder. She turned completely as Ringo slowly closed the last of the distance in a dizzy trudge, laughing through her grin. Her joy was getting to her, forcing incomplete sputters of unshakable happiness from lips. She hadn't felt this giddy in years, but simply taking in Tsunade's narrowed eyes made it feel like she was standing before the gates to paradise.

Glare harsh as it was, she looked like a treasure. Or maybe she was the key? The very thing that would unlock everything; everything that had been taken from her the moment she'd been told of her illness.

"Eheh...Hah...you- you're Tsunade.", she slowly stammered out, struggling against the heaviness in her chest. "Tsunade of the Sannin! It's really you! Ahahah! H-"

Ringo's laughter broke and gave way to a round of harsh coughs she covered with the inside of her arm. Her breathing was strained and shallow, and her hand still clutched her chest, shaking, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She barely even noticed the sweat sliding down her head and neck as every area of her mind busied itself dumbly observing the woman before her.

She hadn't even seen the younger girl to Tsunade's side, narrowing her eyes as she'd walked forward as if to ask something, only to be cut off by an arm from the Sannin herself. The woman stared Ringo down as she recovered from her coughing fit, smile still suck on her lips.

"Who are you?"

'Hah', Ringo couldn't help but laugh to herself at the demand of a name. There was no way she wasn't fully aware of who she was talking to.

"Eheh…Ameyuri Ringo,", she weakly offered. "But you...you already knew that, right?"

The apprentice's eyes widened in recognition at the name, and she took a quick step back, hold tightening on a...pig? That she was holding? Cute. And the bit of fear in her eyes...That was nice. The Seven Swordsmen had been gaining reputation outside of Kiri the past couple years, however close Mist had kept its cards to its chest. It was nice to know that her name was specifically among that clout, rather than just the group itself.

And Tsunade...all of a sudden it was hard to believe she was really that terrible at gambling. Her poker face let absolutely nothing slip, and put forth a stark contrast of hard authority compared to the shorter girl next to her.

"Yes, Ameyuri Ringo. One of the Seven Swordsmen of the Bloody Mist."

"Bloody Mist?"

Ringo couldn't keep the incredulity from her voice. Bloody Mist, huh...That was new. She couldn't resist another chuckle, painful as it was. The adrenaline was wearing off now that she was still, and pain was quickly being reintroduced to her body.

"That's a new one...I know a lot of people back in Mist that would... _love_ to hear...that name, aheh..."

Damn, talking like this was starting to hurt...Her energy was _gone_ , and she could feel her knees shake, threatening to buckle at any moment. She took a deep breath and steadied herself.

"But...," she smiled back up at Tsunade, "It's just Ameyuri Ringo now."

The woman's face remained passive, as if what she'd said affected nothing at all. Having looked at her for a minute now, and coming down from her little high…

'Damn, she looks good for her age!'

Was she younger than Ringo had thought? Or was she just beautiful? Silence took over for a few seconds, and she noticed the apprentice looking warily back and forth between her teacher and Ringo herself. Was she expecting a fight?

"So you abandoned Mist?", Tsunade spoke once more, only a hint of curiosity in her question.

"Yup."

The quick response actually made the woman's eyes narrow. It wasn't a hard question to answer though.

"Mist...wasn't working out anymore.", she continued. "Lots of reasons."

"Those being?"

As much as she'd held back explaining herself up to this point, it would probably do well to give her everything she wanted to know. Doctor's gotta know their patient, after all. Keeping that in mind, she sighed, readying herself to go through everything that had brought here here.

"First...Mist sucks. You don't-" a rasping cough, "don't need me to-, to tell you that. Second..."

This would probably be reason enough to have her head if she were still in Kirigakure.

"Yagura's insane. Take orders...from him? No- no way. And the biggest reason..."

Ringo's smile broadened, raising a hand to point at the woman before her, stumbling back a step.

"You."

The look the Sannin gave her at that was harsher than anyone in Mist could ever hope to manage, eyes narrowed and angry like she was ready to just wipe away this conversation with a single movement before moving on. The girl beside her was sweating, torrent of emotions swirling through her as she thought through the possible meanings behind that declaration.

"And what do you want from me?"

Maybe the water _had_ done something to her, because Ringo's smile stuck like tree sap. Combined with her haggard demeanor and pale exhaustion, she probably looked horrifying, much like the people she'd encountered when first stepping into Fire Country. Something about that struck her as funny in the moment.

"I have..." Ringo answered breathily, "A problem...Probably noticed that, right?"

She took another step forward, hand idly clutching at her chest once again.

"Illness, see? It's pretty b-urgh...pretty bad right now, y'know?"

Tsunade's glare sank back into a placid neutrality as the pieces connected.

"You want me to heal you."

It was a statement. Looked like they were all on the same page here. The assistant, the timid girl who'd deferred to Tsunade the moment it was established that this was something important, began looking at Ringo with more interest. She'd be unnerved under those methodical, scrutinizing eyes if she wasn't so pleased right now.

"You got it, eheh...Nobody...nobody in Mist can do shit. You...You're the best there is. _You can_."

"I see."

Tsunade didn't waver an inch, staying in the strong and controlled stance she'd taken the moment Ringo appeared.

.

.

.

.

.

"No."

.

.

.

.

.

"...what?"

It came out quieter than Ringo had meant it to, and her grin slipped down into a horizontal line, lips parted just slightly. The smile clawed back after she spoke, clinging to her face as if what the woman had said had gone unheard or ignored. Tsunade spoke again, short and simple,

"No."

She wanted something, that was it.

"I can pay, any- anything you wa-"

"No. I will not heal you."

A chill skittered across her back, spreading throughout her body in a dreadful wave that slowly overrode the heat and sweat she'd felt just moments before.

"It doesn't have- doesn't have to be money, I can-"

"No."

Tsunade turned. She was turning around? She was walking away like this was over!?

"W-wait!"

The Sannin paused, turning back again.

"Wait, I- I can do whatever- whatever you want! Anything at all!"

The woman's eyes looked down Ringo's figure and shot back up, eyes hardening into a glare once more.

"'I'm retired. I don't just _heal_ anymore. I'll tell you once more; _I will not help you._ "

The road was hushed with the declaration, broken only by the morning birds chirping in the trees around them. Tsunade began to turn once more, and Ringo's shaking legs buckled and she sunk, landing hard on one knee, small stones on the road digging into her skin.

" _PLEASE!"_

Tsunade stopped turning, but...She stood silent. Still and final, like a statue looking down on her. She wasn't...even going to repeat it again. The protege was staring at her worriedly. As much as Tsunade kept turning her back on her, she hadn't so much as looked away.

This wasn't...

She couldn't breathe. Her breath kept hitching in her chest, unable to move properly with the tension that filled her. This wasn't what was supposed to happen.

She was staring at the ground, focused on the rocks and dirt of the roadway. When had she looked away from Tsunade? She slowly brought her gaze back up, then wished she hadn't. The look the medic was giving her...There was no arguing. Nothing would change her mind.

Absolutely nothing.

Sweating, and swaying slightly, Ringo stood, unsure where she found the strength to hold herself up. It wasn't something she put any focus into. She couldn't even really feel it. It was so...quiet. The younger girl by Tsunade's side looked pensive, and took a step forward.

"What are-...um...What are you going to do now?"

...That was a good question. What _was_ she going to do now? She didn't...have much left in her. Her health was reaching its limit. Her time was running out. She knew it, and it looked like they knew just as well as her. Her hand raised to cover half of her face as she looked away. She could feel the burning of tears building up in her eye. She hadn't cried in years. She wasn't going to start now, not when she was being watched. Ringo could feel herself smiling, probably in disbelief. She desperately wanted to think this was all just a joke, but the pain was too real for that to be true. Her breaths too labored and ragged. Her emotions collided with each other, shuffling between agony, terror, rage, and a crushing sadness until they were mixed enough to force a disbelieving chuckle from her lips.

"I don't- I don't...know...Eheh. May'be I'll..."

She weakly raised a hand, motioning behind her.

"Maybe I'll go back to the hotel. Get a...a nice room. Soft bed...Order the best plate they have. Fire Country's food ain't bad...I..."

She trailed off, unsure what else to say. After all, that was all she _could_ do, really. She might have wanted to go on a killing spree right now if it didn't all feel so utterly pointless. When she first learned the severity of her illness, she was angry beyond belief because she still had some hope of a way out, and it just wasn't _fair_. Now...Now that was gone. This was her hope, her last chance, and it had said no. Blocked her off like an indestructible wall that spanned the continent, no way over or around. She couldn't force them; not only would it be of no help considering she didn't know what the medical treatment would even look like, but she couldn't hope to take them on anyways, especially with how weak she was right now.

She'd felt free just moments before, moreso than she'd ever felt in her life. Now she'd been caged once more, and that cage was shrinking by the minute until it would _crush her_ and for the life of her right now she just _couldn't breathe-_

Her answer seemed to bring the apprentice's expression down further. She looked worried. Sad and worried...Pitying. That's what it was.

Oh, Kami, she was being pitied.

The hand she had covering the side of her face slid up, wiping away the wetness in her eye and running itself through her hair. Even the constant burning pain of the illness tearing through her was dulling again with how numb she felt right now.

Tsunade turned for a final time, muttering something that she couldn't comprehend beneath the ringing that was filling her ears. The apprentice took a few slow steps back from Ringo, then turned and made to follow her teacher, glancing back every few moments.

The morning air was frigid, enveloping her as her only hope walked away, never looking back.

It was so...cold out. Was Fire Country supposed to be this cold...?

Her hand covered her eyes, squeezing lightly as her head lowered, silence settling over the roadway.

...How long was she going to stand here? However much better it would be than the hard rocks of the road beneath her, she just...couldn't bring herself to go to the hotel. The thought, the knowledge that that place would be her grave...

She was scared.

Her feet moved beneath her, taking a few dazed steps, wavering slightly with every movement.

She wanted a bed. Something. Something to take the effort away, so she wouldn't have to _try_ anymore.

Ringo moved without thought, slowly making her way to the hotel she'd run from as the sun rose behind her.

Quietly opening the door, she was met with the same desk girl she'd yelled at earlier, nervous at the sight of her, staring straight at her in silence.

"...room?"

"W-what?"

"Can I get a room?"

The girl glanced from side to side. Was that a nervous habit of hers?

"Um...I don't know if-"

She dropped a hand onto the hilt of one of the Kiba.

"Give me a _room_."

That shut her up fast. As little energy as Ringo had, she could at least manage a threat if it meant getting her out of this damn doorway. Though...if the girl held her ground, she honestly doubted she'd do anything about it. She could barely bring herself to narrow her eyes at the girl, much less kill her.

A minute of agreements, pay, and non-answers later, she was checked in and given a room number. Barely even remembering moving from the desk to the space she was provided, she trudged in, nearly tripping over her own dragging feet, collapsing onto the bed.

...Where was her panic? Where was the anger? She'd been faced with death before and it made her _furious_. It was the most fear inducing thing in the world, the one thing that drove her in everything she did. Now...it did nothing. It just filled her with an overwhelming weariness.

Once more, time passed by in a blur, and she couldn't bring herself to focus on anything. Every thought was too haphazard to pay attention to, flying by far too quick to make sense of. Nothing she could think about seemed like something preferable to the comforting blankness that had currently occupied her mind. Eventually, staring at the ceiling, everything came together in one sudden moment of inescapable realization.

She was going to die. There was nothing more to do. No way out, no way to fight.

Ringo sedatedly drew an arm over her eyes as shivers spread over her body.

Her face drew tight and, as her breathing hitched and stuttered, tears began to wet the cloth that covered them.

* * *

(Shizune)

'That girl was a killer. That girl was a killer. _That girl was a killer_.'

Shizune had to repeat this to herself again and again as she trudged along behind her mentor, hammering it into her head hard enough that it could be all there was to this situation. So she could stop thinking about it. So she wouldn't have to feel remorse for leaving. The woman she saw wasn't weak, wasn't helpless, she was a trained killer that had murdered more people than most ANBU.

It wasn't hard to place her at all, and not a moment after hearing her name she remembered where she'd seen her face before; in the middle of bingo books with detail after detail about how vicious she was. How predatory she was when she fought. She was a murderer. A killer that served killers. She...she was...

That girl was even younger than Shizune herself. And she looked so...scared. So shocked. Nothing like the profiles they had of her in Leaf Country, devoid of emotion for the sake of accuracy. The disbelief that flooded into her was...horrifying. Pleading, begging for the encounter to go how she wanted. When Lady Tsunade said "No", and that smile slipped for a second, it was clear just how terrified she was. It showed in her eyes and the sweat rolling down the sides of her head, and that fear stuck from then on as she pleaded. She had to have known that nothing she could offer would change Tsunade's mind with a refusal like that, but people don't continue asking after a no from someone like her sensei unless they've exhausted every other option.

Watching her go through that process was like torture.

And how could it not be? Shizune was a med-nin! It was her job to treat people. It was what she aspired to, what she'd been taught to do and been preparing for since she was a child. To stop pain like she'd just been forced to watch overtake a young girl, that was her dream. And now, the first time someone seeks them out, wholly desperate for help, she walked away from them.

But...what could she do? Tsunade refused with absolutely no room for argument, and Shizune wasn't good enough to help the swordswoman herself...was she?

Shizune was skilled. That much she knew, but...how skilled was she? Everything about this seemed so beyond her, so untouchable no matter how much she wanted to reach for it and take it into her own hands. She didn't even know what this disease was! But…

She was being taught by Tsunade. Ameyuri had said it herself; Tsunade was the best in the world, and Shizune had been learning from her since she was a child. If there was anyone besides her sensei that could do anything, it would be her, wouldn't it...?

Could she do it? And...should she?

That was something she'd nearly forgotten the moment she stopped repeating it to herself. Ameyuri Ringo was a killer. She served the man who gave Kiri the nickname 'Bloody Mist'. She was part of it.

But...Ringo wasn't in Mist right now. Barring her clothes, she apparently had no relation to Water Country whatsoever anymore. She left it behind to find Lady Tsunade. Was that a guarantee that it would be ok if she lived? No...If anything, it was an indicator that she couldn't truly be trusted. She abandoned her country for this! What would stop her from _returning_ to Kiri? What would stop her from becoming a criminal _here_? What if Shizune healed her, and the girl used her life to cut through people in Fire Country?

Could she get a promise? Make a condition? That was an idea. She was desperate enough to say she'd do anything. But what could Shizune even say, really? "Don't do anything bad now"? Even on her deathbed, the girl would probably laugh in her face for saying something that naive. But she had to think of something. Something to justify walking back there. Every step brought her further and further away from her could-be patient, and time was the most important thing for this situation.

'I want to go back.'

That was becoming increasingly obvious as the debate raged on in her head. But a feeling that she _wanted_ to wasn't enough to turn around and do something. She needed a reason, a good enough reason to walk back there despite what her only remaining family thought...didn't she?

"Oink!"

Oh. She was squeezing Tonton.

"Sorry Tonton…", she muttered, easing her hold on the little pig.

Tonton oinked sadly in concern, and a voice spoke up ahead of her.

"Shizune."

She looked up, seeing only her teacher's back as they walked.

"Don't worry about it."

Don't...

"Don't worry about it...?"

Tsunade sighed wearily.

"She'll be dead within a few days. There's nothing you could have done."

Shizune halted immediately. For some reason that sentence hit her like a punch to the gut. Was there really nothing she could do? Was she right, that this was too far beyond her to figure out? There was no way to help a girl begging for someone to save her?

"That...that can't be right!"

"Mm?"

Tsunade turned to look at her, but Shizune's focus was still on the rocks at her feet.

"There has to be _something_ we could do! Some way to help her!"

Her eyes lifted and locked with her teacher's. A second passed between the two and Tsunade turned to face her completely.

"Of course there is."

"Then _do_ it!", she shouted.

Her sensei's look turned to a glare, and most of Shizune's sudden fire nearly sputtered out right then under the harshness of it. She just spoke out against her teacher. Her family.

"Do you plan on making me?"

"N-...n-no." Shizune stammered, "But...If you won't do it then teach _me_ to! You can't- You can't just leave her like that!"

"Shizune, this is not up for discussion. We're leaving."

She was angry. When did she get so angry? She respected her teacher's retirement, but doing absolutely nothing? Walking away when there was a way to help somebody _begging_ for it? That wasn't...that wasn't _right!_

"I'm going back."

Tsunade's eyebrows rose in surprise. Shizune was almost surprised herself, but her anger grounded her, paving the way for determination.

"What?"

"I'm going back! You- you taught me and you say there's a way. I'm going back to treat her!"

Her steps back down the road were quick and automatic, tapping methodically against the gravel path. She'd been prepared to fend off any argument her teacher had about this but...none came. She couldn't even look back for fear of what she might see. What if Tsunade decided that going against her meant Shizune was no longer fit to be her apprentice? What if she'd already left her behind...?

She couldn't think about that right now.

If she could do anything, she could try.

* * *

(Ringo)

The ceiling design in this hotel was actually somewhat interesting. It wasn't just blank, or straight lines, they were diagonal. Ringo thought that was nice.

The bed...good, she supposed. Fluffy. Far better than she could ever get in Mist. Maybe this was making it...?

A bit of time to appreciate the good things here before she...

Everything felt so slow. There wasn't anything to do; nothing to focus on but the jumping stings across her skin and the steady burn inside her. She couldn't even completely catch her breath anymore. But most of all she was...bored. Really, really bored. After a glance at the clock hung on her wall, Ringo saw that it had only been about ten minutes since she first got to the room. She blew out a sigh and drudged one of the Kiba up from her thigh, running her fingers idly across the metal of it.

Somebody would probably come to take them, eventually. They'd catch up to her and get the swords, and maybe her head too while they're at it. Even if they weren't the ones to kill her, a bounty was still a bounty.

Who would get them next…? Probably somebody violent and weird. A man, most likely. Ugh. These swords deserved better. Maybe that would be her legacy? The one woman able to enter the ranks of the Seven Swordsmen. The one who...abandoned them and slowly died a sad, lonely death. That wasn't a very good legacy. Perhaps her memory could be tied to the swords instead. She certainly made an impression with them; nobody who knew of her would ever forget that she did everything she'd done Kiba in hand.

But then time would pass. A new generation, one who would only know her name from books or lessons, would grow and fade, and she'd be forgotten. Once her swords returned to Mist, she'd have nothing.

Damn. That sucked.

'Maybe I shoulda just tried to electrocute Yagura. Called down some lightning and made a real show of it.'

It would've been hopeless, of course, but a blaze of glory sounded much better than this. Maybe once reactionary groups started forming rebellions against him, they'd celebrate her! 'The first to get her head out her ass'. Inspiring. Would've made her one hell of a story, that's for sure.

Quick and hard taps could be heard from the hallway. Somebody was sure in a rush. Maybe they forgot something, or were rushing to catch their lover having an affair here. That would be kinda funny. There'd probably be some pretty amusing yelli-*BANG*

"What"

The word escaped her as her head groggily shot up, looking at the entrance where her door had just been bashed inwards against the wall. In that moment she half expected an assassin, but instead, rushing into the room with a quick glance down at her was...the apprentice? Oh hell, that was a look she had on her. She quickly tied her hair back and began taking things out of her sleeves, plunking them down onto the small corner table the hotel room came with.

"What, what're-"

" _You._ "

Oof. That one word had so much force behind it. The girl paused her...whatever it was to look Ringo dead in the eyes. This was weird.

"You will not hurt anyone in this country, do you understand me?"

"...what?"

Was she going to kill her now? Some weird personal vengeance? Ringo's confusion seemed to piss her off, and she almost growled, teeth bared.

"If I try to heal you, you will promise me that you won't harm _anyone_ here."

She was...what? Wait, what!? All of a sudden energy began flooding back into her, and her arm dragged across her eyes, rubbing the red streaks around them as she tried to fully grasp what was just said to her.

"...you're...going to try to heal m-"

" _Promise me._ "

"I- I promise! Yeah, sure, I promise!

This was happening? Was this real!? Or was she delusional, or...hallucinating? She'd been sweating a lot and hadn't had very much to drink lately. The girl stared at her for a moment, holding her look as Ringo's gaze kept darting between her and the supplies on the table. After what felt like an eternity, she huffed, hurriedly resuming her makeshift setup.

This was happening. She pulled the second Kiba out of her sash and leaned over to set them to the side, grunting in effort. Her new medic made a quick glance in her direction at the sound and her brows furrowed in frustration.

"Stop moving!"

Ringo immediately halted, stilling herself while propped up on an elbow to see what was happening. Another glance from the medic and she clicked her tongue, walking to the bedside and pressing a guiding hand flat against Ringo's collarbone.

"Lay down."

Nothing to do really but comply. Laying back, she could see the girl's hand start to glow, slowly passing over the top of her clothing. It felt...just a little weird. Tingly and pinchy, and...just a tiny bit invasive.

"Is that healing...?", she muttered confusedly.

The medic glanced up at her face, immediately returning her view to the bright glow of her hand.

"No. This is a diagnostic jutsu. I'm just figuring out what you even _have_ right now."

"Ah..."

The tingling wasn't bad, but it definitely felt uncomfortable, and when it passed over some of the more pained areas of her abdomen it started to _hurt_. At the first grunt she let out, her de facto doctor started speaking, likely trying to distract her.

"Is there anything you can tell me about your condition?"

"Eheh...n-no. Back in Kiri, I kinda stormed out pretty early in the whole...'you're gonna die' speech, y'know?"

Maybe it wasn't the best choice, thinking back. The medic's sigh of frustration signaled that she certainly seemed to think so. With that complete lack of help, it was probably better to just be quiet and let the doctor do her thing, but the diagnostic thingy was definitely starting to get _frustrating_. It likely hadn't been long, but dammit it had started to feel like ages were passing when the girl let out a huff.

"Dammit...This...This is probably going to take a lot more than medical jutsu to fix..."

Ok. Ok, that was fine. Ringo honestly didn't have much of a problem with that, she'd do whatever it would take at this point really, no matter how annoying it was getting. At the very least, both her and her healer looked equally annoyed right now. How long was it gonna take her to figure out what was what in there!?

That sensation of something pouring into her everywhere it went, and the twisting feeling every time it passed over a bad spot was starting to become the only thing she could feel. Overwhelming as it was, all Ringo could do about was grind her teeth and grip the fabric of her clothing as hard as she could.

"Stop _squirming!"_

Ringo growled, muttering through clenched teeth,

"I'm _trying!"_

She'd gone from elated to devastated, to empty, back to elated again, and now she was getting _pissed_. This was way more emotional baggage than she'd ever signed up to handle.

Her doctor reached back to the table, grabbing something and uncapping it, then took a hold of the middle of Ringo's arm. Not even a second later, she felt the sudden stick of something poking through her skin.

"Ow!"

"Deal with it!"

It'd been a long time since a girl manhandled her like this. The apprentice wasn't taking any shit here. At least the damn diagnostic thing had stopped as its user rummaged through the supplies on her table.

Unfortunately, she only had about fifteen seconds of relief before a wrenching pain grabbed hold of her gut and squeezed tight. One of her hands flew to the area, pressing it down and trying to ease the sudden throbbing as she smacked the back of her head uselessly against the soft fabric of the mattress that held her.

"What's wrong? Are you ok?"

A bit louder than she'd meant to, Ringo ground the words out angrily, "Oh yeah, I'm _fine_ , this is _normal."_

The medic's eyes narrowed, but she said nothing, turning back to her table.

Maybe she shouldn't be getting so snappy with the girl who was apparently willing to help her, but dammit there was just so many sensations happening right now and it was definitely overloading her. After a bit, not even the doctor's orders to stay still could be held entirely, rolling onto her side, hand still clutching her abdomen, and covering her ear to drown out the noise of rummaging. She just had to block out _something_ here, and she could handle it, she was sure.

And she definitely wasn't the only one frustrated at this point. Time was passing and the apprentice was making more and more noise over by her little setup. From the looks of things she was having trouble trying to figure something out. What her disease was? What to do about it? Ringo wouldn't ask; not only was it best to let the doctor be the one to handle the doctor stuff, but she was in too much pain right now to bother.

Eventually, the girl smacked her own thigh with a fist and blew out a deep breath, running a wrist across her forehead. Her concentrated look was getting more and more worried. That wasn't a good sign.

'Just block it out- let her do her thing and it'll be fine...', she repeated to herself in a mantra.

Eventually there was some noise, muffled by Ringo's hand over her ear, and her eyes opened slightly. In the doorway was...

Tsunade? It was Tsunade, her back to the inside of the room, saying...something. It looked like she was trying to be dramatic. Ringo's sight glided over to the apprentice girl, who seemed shocked at her teacher's appearance. Was she getting advice or something? It seemed like it.

Eventually, Tsunade turned to look at her student, saying a few more words with the increasingly familiar softness of Fire Country in her expression. The student recovered from her surprise and returned to her medicinal station in a rush, seemingly inspired. Another minute ticked by _in excruciating pain_ , and some roadblock she'd had seemed to be solved. Her look turned pleased, and she smiled at the Sannin with a weird sparkling in her eyes that the master returned, exchanging a few more delicate words.

...What the _fuck_ was this? What the hell was happening!?

There was _no way_ they were talking about medicine anymore, they were doing some freaky personal shit.

That's nice that they're bonding, but she's fucking dying on a bed in a shitty hotel here so if they're going to actually help her they need to pay some GOD DAMN ATTEN- CALM. She had to _calm down_ , however difficult it was with her labored breaths and all of the hateful burning pain shooting through her. They were helping her. They were her only chance. She had to make this easy as she could for them. But dammit, if they told her "woops, we needed the 5 minutes we spent having some fluffy reconciliation to save your life, you're gonna die now", Ringo would use every last bit of her strength to _cut them into pieces and fry their bodies_.

She rolled onto her back again, trying to take some deeper breaths. A quick look towards the doorway revealed that Tsunade had disappeared, going off to...who knows where. Her protege, however, rushed to Ringo's side, sternly demanding,

"Shirt off."

"Fresh."

Ouch! The glare the medic fixed her with was sharper than anything Ringo could ever hope to achieve! Ringo managed a gruff chuckle as she undid the sash around her waist and tugged off her top with a bit of assistance from the healer. Even that felt like so much effort now, leaving her feeling winded and weak. The girl treating her left the room for a minute, a dazed Ringo trying to imagine what she could be doing.

She came back with a bucket. Out of all the weird possibilities she'd imagined, none of them had involved a bucket. The thing was set down with a small splash coming from its contents. Her doctor took out a small sponge and dunked it into the sudsy water, raising it and wringing out the majority of the liquid before running it across the skin on Ringo's side.

"What's that...?"

"Don't worry about it."

That wasn't good. For all the answers she could've gotten, that wasn't a good one at all.

A few more passes with the sponge and she seemed satisfied, setting it down and pressing her fingers across the cleaned area. It was all she could do to focus on her breaths while the healer slowly moved her hands across her stomach and side, placing a bit of pressure every here and there, giving a bit of tingling like she was touching chakra to her.

Her bizarre little ministrations paused after a minute, and something else chilly and wet was dabbed against her skin. Ringo opened her eyes once more to see the girl wiping her side with some kind of fluid that felt cold and smelled a pungent acidic sour. The scent filled up almost the entire room, and everything about it made her think 'hospital'. It smelled...sterile. That was the best description. So clean it burned her nostrils as she breathed it in, and could nearly taste it in on her tongue.

The apprentice moved back to get something and returned to her with whatever it was in hand. Ringo was having trouble focusing, everything was starting to blur. Was that...a knife? Scalpel, a medical thing. What, what would…

Wait.

WAIT.

Was she going to cut into her!? What!? Did- Did she have to!? They didn't have anything to knock her out, did they? Let alone the time for it. Couldn't they do it with chakra!? There were plenty of techniques like that! Was that safe? Probably not, not with her abysmal condition right now. Chakra induced anything didn't mesh well with health problems, and unconsciousness on its own could likely be a problem.

Oh fuck. Oh, _FUCK_. If she wasn't so damn keen on living, she'd kill herself now so she wouldn't have to go through this.

There was a ripping sound and something soft like cloth was pressed against her lips.

"Open."

She weakly obeyed, and the folded up bolt of fabric was pushed lightly inside her mouth.

"Bite."

She clamped down on the thing, sweating bullets and trying desperately to focus on the apprentice's face; she absolutely didn't want to see anywhere else with where she thought this was heading.

The girl looked determined. Glad _somebody_ was feeling good right now.

"The outer layers of your skin here should be numbed by now, but it won't stop you from feeling everything once we really get going. This is going to hurt,"

Why? Why was this happening? She never did anything bad enough to warrant this, did she?

"But I need you to stick through it, ok? And whatever you do. Do not. _Move_. Just power through it for as long as you can."

Ringo _whimpered_. A sniveling whining sound that was just impossible to contain. There had to be some kind of brightside to this, right? If she's going to go through this, it's because it was going to work. It was going to work, and she'd live a long successful life accomplishing everything she dreamed of and more. That's what would happen.

Her head laid back, staring at the ceiling and starting to count the nice diagonal lines on the design up there. And then, there was a pressure on her side; no pain, but like something was poking against her skin, pushing it in and going in a line, and then...it was cold. Air pushing against parts of her never meant to be exposed like this. She felt nauseous.

And suddenly it was _searing_.

If she wasn't biting into the cloth between her teeth she'd be screaming. The dragging across her flesh was sharp and terrible like she'd been speared, tearing apart her side and rending it to pieces. She clutched handfuls of the sheets she laid on, gripping and squeezing them in her fists so hard she could feel her fingers trembling.

It was hot- that was something she hadn't expected. It felt like she'd been thrown into a firepit and nothing could put her out, like the fire was inside of her, slowly chewing into her until she was consumed by it.

Ringo never took her gaze from the ceiling as another wave of bile rose in her throat as something was severed inside of her, tracing the lines running across it with her eyes as she did the best she possibly could to distance herself from her own body. Her jaw was clenched tight enough to crack her teeth if this continued too long, barely stopping herself from writhing in the agony that wracked through her with every _cut_ and _pull_ across her muscles.

In very little time she could barely comprehend anything but lines and pain swirling together like a dizzy episode in her quickly developing deliria. Her head arched back, smacking against the bed that served as her operating table as she cried. When had she begun crying? She could feel her mouth moving, trying to say something that was blocked off by the gag.

She'd never been tortured before, not properly. Not like this.

'FUCK, FUCK, FUCK' thundered through her head, overpowering any other thought that tried to form, and the light outside her window was brightening into the most glaring thing she'd ever seen, wrapping itself around her until she could comprehend nothing but a blinding white. As terrified as she'd been to go to sleep, when her vision began going dark she couldn't form a single coherent thought about it. She could hardly even tell it was happening, embracing the numbing escape, and before she even realized what was happening to her she'd welcomed it, swimming quick and deep into the freezing depths of unconsciousness.

* * *

AN: Ick.

xxx

 **Imagine Stories** \- Thank you so much! Glad you can find enjoyment in this story. Lots more to come, hope you can stick around :P


	8. Restoration: Part 2

It was bright. Shining and painful, burning all throughout her like she'd woken up on the sun. Her vision was a jumbled mess of different blotted lights, each threatening to blind her. And at the same time, it was...difficult to feel anything. Every sense she had, even touch, was strange and muddled, unsure about what it was perceiving.

Ringo tried to move her fingers.

...did that do anything? It was hard to tell. She tried moving her hand and felt...something. Her hand felt like it was at least moving. There wasn't much sensation, but she could tell it was definitely brushing against something. That meant she was alive, right? She gathered what little energy she had and tried to sit up-

FUCK, ow, fuck, there's pain now- lots of pain, lots of sudden terrible pain in her sides that forced a choking cough from her as everything around her started swimming, a high pitched ringing filling her ears.

A dark shape took form against the harsh light that filled the room, slowly pressing something hard like glass against her lips and gently leaning her head back while saying something.

It was water. A cup of water. As much as she'd been avoiding water around here, the cool liquid against her cracked lips felt like a dream. It wasn't like she had the strength to protest, anyways. She only stopped drinking when the glass was taken away, breathing out hard and gasping for more air, coughing again.

Someone was talking; she could hear the voice, but it was impossible to make out what was being said. After a moment of confused staring, squinting to try and bring the world into focus, a hand pressed lightly on the middle of her chest, lowering her back down to the bed and bringing her head back onto a pillow. Soon, the noises she heard started becoming clearer, and her vision turned from a blurry mess to a cross of two images slowly mixing together as everything settled.

"-r..-e? -i .-n, ..-ou -ear me? Can you hear me?"

"A-ah, y-eah…"

That wasn't a good voice. It was like Ringo could barely talk; every noise that came out of her was rough and coarse, as if it had been soaked, pressed, and pounded down before leaving her mouth.

"Just lay back." the voice soothed, moving a bit to Ringo's side. "Can you feel anything?"

"H-hurts..." was the best she could manage, and as garbled as it was, it seemed to be understood by the figure looming over her. It looked...oh. The apprentice. That's right.

"Just keep still, okay? Don't try to move, I'll see if I can get you some actual painkillers."

Painkillers. That sounded good right now. Noticing the pain when she'd tried to move made it register in her mind, and the feeling slowly spread throughout her body, refusing to leave even as she laid back down. Her doctor was messing around in that little setup she'd made on the table. There was...wow. It looked like there was a lot of stuff on there.

"You...c-carry all that...?", she choked out.

Talking was difficult. Painful, and barely understandable with how strained it was. Luckily, the apprentice seemed to grasp what she was trying to say, glancing back at Ringo before grabbing a small cylindrical container that rattled as she walked back to the bedside.

"Yes, I do. Always good to be prepared."

However tempted she was to ask how she fit all of that in her sleeves, she honestly didn't have the energy to right now. Instead, she groggily watched as the container was opened and a small tablet spilled out.

"Head up."

It hurt to do, but what the doctor wanted the doctor would get, especially if it meant some pain relief soon. The pill was placed on her tongue and the glass of water held to her mouth to swallow it down.

Her head fell back as she gasped for air. Should taking a drink be this exhausting...?

Actually...should it be? She's...she's awake. Gaining coherence however slowly, Ringo was awake.

'Does this mean I'm ok...?'

She had to wonder. To some degree, Ringo had never expected to wake up again. Remembering the pain, she shuddered. She nearly wouldn't have wished to if that had kept up.

Ringo glanced upwards, only to meet the eyes of her doctor who was sitting next to her, watching her gather her thoughts intently. The girl would probably tell her more about her health when she was fully up and lucid.

For now, once the medic was satisfied that she'd taken the pill without any problems, she laid Ringo back down, gentle and firm as before, returning to her station by the table. Without much to do but wait, Ringo's vision drifted around the room.

'It's bright...'

It was midday light; tall and shining, the kind of light that made you squint to see properly. Not something that she'd ever gotten in Mist, but she'd been getting acquainted with the type ever since arriving in the Land of Fire. She looked away from the window. It was difficult to imagine she'd ever get used to how much light there was around here. Mist was easier on the eyes.

Instead, she looked downward and noticed something. The sheets were...clean. That wasn't entirely unexpected, but it was surprising nonetheless. Did they move her...? Was this a different room? It looked...mostly the same, but it was hard to tell. The lines on the ceiling, the sheets, the walls, they all looked the same in hotel rooms.

This was...probably not the same place she'd been treated. An impromptu emergency surgery wouldn't be the cleanest thing, and the little she could remember of the ordeal aside from how awful it had been was that it involved a massive amount of slicing her up with a knife. There _had_ to have been quite a bit of blood spilled there, no matter the fancy medical abilities.

Actually...She was still shirtless. Lowering the sheet a bit and settling it on her stomach revealed...two stitched up incisions?

First of all those looked terrible. Enough to make her nauseous just looking at them. As clean as the stitches were, the wounds were just...

And second of all...two? Two bloody and swollen lines running through her skin, one on each side of her abdomen, skin around them rubbed slick with some kind of medicinal salve. The newer one looked like an L with the tail bent, slightly higher than the simple vertical line on her opposite side. She only remembered there being one before waking up after the ordeal was over. How long had it taken? It was still morning when the surgery began, and there was no way it was the same day. So...it had been at least a full twenty four hours since it started.

Ringo laid back once more. Everything still hurt, and with nothing else to look at, her gaze drifted listlessly around the room, eventually settling on the girl who treated her, really taking her in for the first time.

She was...young. That was obvious, but she wasn't young enough to look like a child, or an inexperienced doctor. If Ringo had to guess, she'd probably guess them to be somewhere around the same age. Short black hair, simple black robe, soft face. She fit the look of "adult student" perfectly.

...She hadn't questioned it when she showed up suddenly, but now...why had she? Tsunade, her teacher, said no. She refused to even consider treating her and walked away with this girl in tow. Why'd she come back? Did the Sannin change her mind? That didn't seem like the case. Especially when she actually did show up in the doorway with that weird dramatic flair. So...the apprentice came back on her own...?

Huh. Damn.

If that was true, then she owed this girl her life. Maybe. Depending on if she was actually ok now or not. This whole 'forever in your debt' thing suddenly seemed a lot more serious, now that she was alive to pay it.

Still...why _did_ she decide to treat her? The girl was scared when she recognized her during their confrontation, and Ringo didn't know her at all. In fact...She didn't even know her name. Until now, she's just been "the girl being taught by the real deal". And here she was, idly writing something down after what may have been a life saving surgery. Or...surgeries, possibly.

"H-hey..."

She turned back, raising a questioning brow.

"What's...your n...n-name...?"

For a brief second, she looked...really ticked. However, she cooled her features quickly, taking one deep breath before turning back to her writing and answering.

"It's Shizune."

Shizune...

"...th...thanks, Sh-...Shizune..."

That made her pause, and after a moment her head lowered as she continued to write.

"...Of course. I'm a medic."

Hahhh. She sounded happy. That was cute. Ringo didn't even bother catching the low giggle before it tumbled from her mouth.

A few more minutes passed by in weary silence before the apprenti- Shizune stood and brought her chair over to the bedside.

"H'okay...your condition. Ameyuri-san,"

"m'prefer Ringo..."

"Ringo-san. Here's the diagnosis. You're a damn _mess."_

Ouch. The girl- Shizune put her hands on her hips, glaring down at her.

"Honestly, the state you were in, it's almost a miracle you weren't dead weeks ago! Cleaning up that mess was a nightmare; almost everything was infected, most of your body needed to be flushed out and cleaned, and half of your organs were practically eating themselves by the time I got to them! And do you have any idea how difficult it was to keep you from dying from the surgery needed to _save_ you!?"

...was she being yelled at? For...almost dying? She guessed she'd be moody too if she had to perform an emergency treatment for hours on end in a hotel room, but damn, Shizune could yell. Just listening to it hurt, even as the rest of the pain had slowly started to fade from the painkiller.

"S-'rry…"

Hearing about it now, now that she was awake after the fact, it was almost surreal. The entirety of the past two and a half months since she left Kiri...it all felt like a dream. As if, even if it had happened, it hadn't happened to her. She might have even believed that if the sensations from it all weren't so clear and burning, however cloudy her head was getting now.

Shizune, for her part, huffed and maintained her narrowed eyes.

"Mhm. Even with that done, you have a _lot_ of recovering to do, understand me?"

"Yye-eah…"

Was that her voice? It sounded stupid. Hah. It actually brought out a dumb chuckle from her, painful as it was to laugh.

...Actually, if she thought about it, the pain wasn't as bad as it had been when she first came to. Thank Kami. Shizune, however, seemed less than impressed with her reply, rolling her eyes and moving back to her desk.

"We'll talk more after you've rested a bit. Maybe after another healing session or two."

She'd had healing sessions? That was cool. It was nice to know that she was in the recovery stage instead of the treatment stage. So...if she was recovering, then she was fixed, right? No problems at all? Yeah. Not a single one. Yeah it was probably that. That was good! That was great, even!

"...w-woo..."

...did she just say that out loud? She didn't mean to, did she? Hah. Pfft-haha! Her head lolled back to the pillow, staring up at the ceiling.

Ugh, Kami, her head was swimming again. Didn't that already sort itself out...? She looked down at her hand, resting idly atop the nice soft sheets of her bed. If she could still move her fingers, that would mean she was still ok, wouldn't it?

She flexed her fingers out, and then drew them back into a fist.

And flexed them out again...and back in again.

Andddd out...aaaand fist…

…

Ringo glanced at the clock.

Oh. She'd just spent ten minutes watching her hand. Oh!

'...damn, I'm hiiiiigh…'

She'd never really been high before. Drunk? Plenty of times. But never anything like this. It was...weird. But weird in a nice way. It was warm. And she couldn't feel the surgical pains anymore, so as far as she was concerned, everything was pretty great right now. Things were lookin' good. Happy day's on the horizon! Everything's comin' up Ringo!

That one made her snort, which further broke down into a whole other mess of rough giggles and snickers.

Yeah...yeah, this was good. What should she do after this? Screw Mist, Fire Country was pretty great, weird as it was. The food's good, too. _Damn_ good. And the fried stuff here? _Daaaaamn_.

That settled it. First thing she'd do when she could scoot out the hospital-er, hotel. Hotelspital. First thing's gonna be finding a food stall and ordering one of every sweet treat they make. Then, some sightseeing! There were some neat spots in this country, and she's not the kind the let good things go ungotten. Thennn…

Then what? Maybe she'd skip out on this place too, maybe not. This country was great, but there was still more world out there. She'd figure that out when she came to it, she supposed. If she did go somewhere else, where to next? Suna supposedly sucked right now, so probably not there. Maybe Kumo? Or one of the minor villages. That actually sounded pretty fun! She could go to the Land of Hot Springs! Now if anything sounded good, that sure as hell did. A land filled to the brim with nice, clean water? Like a dream. And then...nn...

...

…

Ringo's eyes slowly opened as she woke, body strained and sore.

Wait, what? ...Wasn't she already awake? She glanced at the window only to be met with the darkness of night, all the light in her room coming from a lamp on Shizune's desk setup. Oh, shit, it wasn't nearly as bad as before but everything _hurt_. The hell happened?

She felt even weaker than before, like she'd been beaten down by every other member of the Seven Swordsmen, despite the eased pain. This time it was like she just had no _energy_. Nothing to keep her moving, no strength in her, just some hurt and a newfound talent for lying down and doing nothing that involved effort.

"Slept well?", a voice asked mildly, breaking her bleary haze.

That was Shizune's voice, coming from somewhere beside her. She's...sitting in a chair, reading a book.

"...s-slept…?", she managed, voice still rugged and broken as before.

She clapped the book shut, looking up at Ringo.

"Yes, slept. You've been asleep for about nine hours now."

...Well that didn't sound right. When did that happen?

"...really...?" she asked, incredulously. Shizune just rolled her eyes, smiling a bit.

"Yes, really. How are you feeling?"

"Sore..."

Her smile grew, standing up and setting her book on the bedside table.

"Sounds about right. Give me a minute, and we'll see if we can get some food in you."

Food. Just the word made her recognize what she hadn't noticed before; she was _starving_. She'd probably been given nourishment since her procedures first started, but food? Real, actual food? None. And if she _had_ gotten any, she didn't remember it, so it didn't count and she should definitely get more.

But, she had some time until that food arrived, so instead, she was left to gather herself now that she was awake and thinking clearly.

So. From what Ringo could gather, she had received the painkiller from Shizune, flopped around for a bit in a hazy high, and then fallen asleep for the rest of the day.

That was...astoundingly embarrassing. Not only was she helpless for that duration, but she was probably dazed and strange throughout the time she was awake.

And...something she'd learned from seeing Fuguki drink himself into a stupor; once you've seen someone bumbling around like a dumbass, you never forget it. She probably lost all of the 'cool kunoichi' points she'd had with Shizune during that time.

That sucked.

Luckily, Ringo wasn't left to think about that fact for too long before Shizune came back, carrying a tray with several smaller dishes on it. The sight of that food was more than enough to momentarily take her mind off of her ruined image; vegetable rice, slices of orange, some kind of fire country beans, and small bits of chicken. That likely wasn't too over the top for Leaf standards, but _damn_ , that was some good stuff.

Her excitement was probably evident in the way she was looking at the food, because Shizune smiled at her as she placed the tray on the bed to Ringo's side.

"Think you can actually eat by yourself now, or do you still need help?"

... _Still_ need help? By herse-...Oh, shit. So she did get food before, and apparently she didn't handle it very well. She coughed, clearing her throat and straining to sound as not in pain as possible, despite the roughness in her voice.

"...I can eat. Thank you."

Shizune was far too amused by this, smirking and grabbing her book from the nightstand, sitting herself down in the bedside chair once more.

...Okay, she had to know.

"While I was out of it…", she ventured, Shizune humming a small noise, encouraging Ringo to continue.

"...did I...do anything dumb…?"

"Aside from asking me to help feed you when you probably didn't need it? Not really. You giggled a lot, and then passed out."

That was embarrassing. Mortifying, even. It did, however, confirm that her image as a cool and tough ninja would be forever tarnished in the eyes of her doctor.

Which wasn't good. In fact, that sucked! She actually _liked_ this doctor.

'Much better than the last one, that's for sure…'

No point in trying to salvage that, then. Best to play it off as cool as possible. Which wasn't actually very hard to do, since the moment she started eating some of the vegetable rice, she made the astounding discovery that it was _delicious_. She had to take eating slow with both her soreness and inability to turn her body too much, but it was _so good_. The pain in her throat wasn't nearly enough to deter her from food this tasty. Maybe it was just the fact that she didn't remember having anything to eat for the past however many days it had been now, but that wouldn't stop the food from tasting amazing, so there was no point dwelling on it. Her eating was only interrupted by the soft yet clinical voice of Shizune, still looking down at her book.

"Once you finish eating we can start on another healing session. After that's done and you've rested more, we can talk a bit more in depth about your condition, perhaps tomorrow afternoon or so."

Ringo gave a hum of acknowledgement, still focused moreso on her food than the conversation. Though, it _was_ something to take note of. Shizune had told her she'd need a lot of healing sessions, so she'd better get used to them quickly, and she definitely wanted the news on her condition. Truth be told...she was already feeling better. Not well, oh Kami no, she didn't feel well at all, but it was no longer like she was _in the process_ of dying. Now it was more like she'd _been_ on the brink of death, and was slowly moving upwards. That was good. It was...comforting.

Ringo brought a slice of orange to her mouth and bit into it, savoring its flavor. Fresh fruit was always the best, and a true rarity where she was from.

So...she was recovering. However long it would take, she was getting better. She'd recover and find the life she wanted, whether it be in Leaf or anywhere else in the world. She could do it. And it was truly hard to be negative when eating a nice meal...

Things were looking up.

Things were getting better.

It hit her all at once, a warm blanketing feeling of security, and for the third time in the past few days, Ringo felt like she was about to cry, this time out of relief.

For the first time in her life since she'd first claimed the Kiba and felt their sparks across her skin, she felt...safe.

* * *

-EXTRA-

Shizune sat with a weary sigh, dabbing the sweat off her forehead with a small cold cloth.

'Finally…'

Finally having been able to sit down, she relished the bit of rest. After a moment, she raised her head to look at her sleeping patient, illuminated only by the room's lights now that the sun had set.

That...was most likely the most difficult surgical procedure she's ever done. If not the most difficult, than absolutely the most time consuming, as well as the most straining. It had taken nearly eight hours of constant work to finish the first part of her treatment. Cleaning, healing, neutralizing...

That said...so far it was looking okay, though she'd need to keep her under close observation for a while to make sure everything was truly stable. She'd already had a few scares during the surgery. Losing her patient after it was over would be beyond awful.

Quite frankly, Ameyuri's illness was devastating. Truth be told, it was shocking she hadn't died already considering the state of her body. Even more shocking was that she hadn't died during the necessary surgery! Making sure she stayed alive through that was nightmarish. When she first passed out, presumably from pain, exhaustion, or a mix of the two, Shizune nearly had a heart attack. From then on, trying to make sure she was still alive while being treated, and doing everything she could to keep it that way...

Shizune shivered. Being a medic was so much more stressful than she'd expected as a child.

Flushing out the bacteria and neutralizing her disease was only the first step, as it turned out. Ameyuri didn't just need treatment, she needed _repair_. Her body was practically being dissolved from the inside. Half of the organs in her abdomen looked like they'd been torn apart and haphazardly thrown back together. It would take a lot of work yet to ensure her safety. Even with her body cleaned and the incisions closed and given basic treatment, this would take a very long time; much longer than she'd expected. More healing sessions, more medicines, observation, diagnostic checks, physical therapy...

And even with all that, it was no guarantee that she'd recover perfectly. There was almost no way she could escape this without some forms of lasting consequences. Possibly just continued bits of pain, but it was entirely realistic, if not likely, that this may permanently affect her performance as a kunoichi.

...Shizune truly didn't want to be the person to give her that bit of news.

There must be some god laughing at her, somewhere. Perhaps this was what she got for going against her sensei's decision.

With one last glance at the girl laid peacefully on a blood soaked bed, she stood with a small groan, walking towards the hotel's supply closet so she could prep the next door room for transfer. This room was no longer suitable for a patient to rest.

The rooms here were clean. Not sterile, but clean. It would need just a bit of work before she could move Ameyuri in. But, first...she had to change her clothing. There wasn't much room for care in cleanliness, and she was filthy. Sweat and blood stained her front, and red soaked deep into the outfit's hems.

Changing into clean clothing and washing the worst off of herself, Shizune began gathering the needed cleaning supplies from the storage room in the hotel's hallway, her thoughts now consumed by her teacher. That...had been the first time she'd ever blatantly disagreed with one of Lady Tsunade's decisions regarding anything other than her...bad habits. And it was to treat a missing nin. It was quite possibly the most bizarre and unlikely way for such a thing to have happened, but it wasn't like she regretted it.

...did she?

Shizune paused her preparation, her rummaging hands suddenly still, disinfectant in her grip. Until now, she'd been too busy, too distracted to truly think about the situation. First by the girl's obvious poor condition; all she could see was a dying girl begging for help, and then with the surgery itself. Now, now she was thinking.

She'd just treated a missing Kiri nin. One fabled for her brutality and the joy she took in rending apart the lives of those she fought. Who never let _anyone_ she clashed with escape her. She'd deluded herself into thinking a promise would be all that was needed to handle this situation.

This...was bad. This was very bad. In all likelihood, Lady Tsunade had thought about that before making her decision not to treat Ameyuri personally. Shizune had been distracted, blinded by the girl's desperation and pained expressions. She'd stubbornly fooled herself into thinking that the situation wasn't complicated at all. That Ameyuri was just a sick girl in need of help, and that Tsunade wouldn't treat her because of her retirement and headstrong personality. She didn't...she-...

She was shaking.

All of a sudden that determination of hers to do the right thing, to treat someone purely because they needed it, was cracking apart. One of the top shinobi of the Bloody Mist regime was lying asleep and vulnerable on her bed, slowly recovering. Could...she actually do this? Allow this? Was this actually the right thing to do? Lady Tsunade had given her reluctant advice to properly diagnose her and fix together the right kind of medicine, but...

A hand fell with a comforting firmness on her shoulder, and she startled, turning quickly to look at who she knew had to be Lady Tsunade with wide eyes.

"Well? How'd it go?", she questioned. There was no judgement to the look her sensei was giving her. No disappointment, no unsureness, just the cool, in control look she always had when teaching.

"a-ah...It, it's been successful so far. There's a lot more needed, however."

"You're shaking."

"...I am.", she practically whispered, struggling to keep meeting Tsunade's eyes.

Her mentor's hand lifted from her shoulder, drawn in and held in front of her chest as she crossed her arms, closing her eyes and sighing.

"So you're actually putting _thought_ into this now?"

Shizune looked towards the ground.

"...Yes, Lady Tsunade."

There wasn't anything else she could say. She wasn't thinking about the situation as a whole, and now there were repercussions for the decision she'd made. Perhaps she was thinking _too_ much now. Too much about what could happen. She had to think instead about what to do now, while Ameyuri was still unconscious and in need of further treatment to live through this.

"And?", Tsunade's voice broke through her stupor. Her view raised to look her teacher in the eye.

"Lady Tsunade?"

"How do you feel right now?"

How did she feel? She...wasn't sure. This was new territory; a wholly unexplored area of emotion, and in a situation that was entirely unique on its own.

"I...don't know."

But that wasn't entirely true. She thought for a moment longer. Recognizing what she was truly feeling right now seemed like it would make everything worse, somehow. But...

"I think...I feel guilty."

Guilt. That was definitely it. She was remorseful. She'd repaired a killer back into working order. Whatever wrong could come of this, if anything should happen involving Ameyuri from now on, it would be her fault. And...she was stuck with that. Could she do something besides finish the healing process now? Bring herself to kill her patient? End a potential threat while it was laid out before her?

...she didn't think she could. No matter how terrible the dread was, how unsure she was about continuing to help this girl, she was stuck with it now. Was that weakness? To be so...unable, so unwilling to make that choice?

She couldn't bring herself to do anything else, so others, innocent people who had nothing to do with this, would be put in danger.

The only thing that broke her from her rumination was her teacher's soft "hmm".

"...I guess that means you'll have to take responsibility for it, doesn't it? After all, she's _your_ patient."

Her patient. That's...that's right. She made the decision. She had to take charge of the situation it caused. She was responsible for whatever happened now, so standing around shaking like a leaf would do her no good. Suddenly, she stood a bit taller, turning back and rummaging through the supply cabinet. Her patient still needed her. That was enough to keep her moving for now.

"I need to prep the transfer room, it's-"

"Ahh. That's done.", Tsunade interrupted.

Shizune's head whipped back, looking at her teacher who was...averting her eyes, trying far too hard to appear nonchalant.

"That's...done?", she questioned.

Tsunade was straining to keep her aloofness, teeth clenching and refusing to look at Shizune.

"Yeah, it's done. Room's disinfected, get to it."

"But you said you wouldn't-"

Tsunade's eyes shot back to her, and she shouted angrily.

"Get _moving!"_

"R-right!", she shrieked, rushing off and away from her angered teacher.

'I can do this,' she thought, hurrying back to her patient's room. 'I'm a medic. I still have a job to do right now.'

Whatever else she was, right now Ameyuri was her patient. She could handle anything that could come of it, no matter what it might be. She learned from the best, after all.

* * *

AN: Ho ho hello there y'all, and happy holidays!

So, finally a chapter of nice calm. I kinda needed that! It's my favorite thing to write anyways, some not hugely stressful bonding. And because I'm the writer, i got to have it be with my two favorite characters! Nice.

So! Real quick, lemme say; I'm gonna be a little busy. I already put Team Leader? on pause for a bit, and with university starting back up I won't have too much time in January. So, bad news; **no update in 2 weeks**. Good news; **updates at the end of January, and updates for everything**. Hoorah! I'll let you know then if updates are going to remain bi-weekly or go to monthly while school is up.

Also, any of y'all ever played Pyre? Absolute amazing, forreal. Got it during the winter sale on steam, i think it's now myyyy third? favorite game? I've played a lotta games so third is damn good. Every game Supergiant makes is just better than the last when they're all masterpieces, don't know how they do it.

Good vibes to all of you, and happy new year from your favorite lesbian! Latuh

xxx

 **IronIolite** \- That's a good vibe to have gotten, so i'm glad it worked out ok! Having it feel like she's gonna die when the summary is "she doesn't die", that feels good to hear lmao. I'm glad you liked it :P Hope you enjoyed a chapter _without_ endless stress. Time for Ringo to adjust. Happy holidays btw!

 **Burkinator** \- Will there be permanent damage? Ohohonnn. I'm not lettin' her off the hook just like that, evading death by a day comes with a price! She'll just have to handle it.

Side note both to your question and everyone wondering, I know it's not the official timeline, but I kinda fucked it up and already had a ton written so i just said whatever and kept going; **In this fic, Ameyuri is the same age as the generation before Naruto's.** That means her age will line up with Kakashi, Guy, Kurenai, Genma, etc. Gonna have an impact on some things it messes up a bit in the canon timeline, so i guess its a very very very mild au...? That's that, though. It's very much a plothole that's gonna remain a plothole forever. My b.


	9. Restoration: Part 3

Ringo squirmed, trying not to groan at the unrelenting feeling of chakra pushing through her insides.

Healing sessions did NOT feel good. She'd thought they would, with all that she'd heard about medical ninjutsu. She'd believed that they'd feel like...like _healing_ , like strength being restored to her after it had been stripped away. That wasn't the case. It felt bizarre, uncomfortable, and, as she would swear to her deathbed, it _hurt_ an incredible amount. Maybe it was just that that she was still in poor condition no matter the healing, but it reminded her of the invasive diagnostic jutsu. Energy being pushed into her body and swimming around and in her organs...it was exhausting and _strange,_ more than anything else. Add on to that the fact that it still used her own body's resources as well as the chakra used to perform it, and it moved her from sore and tired to moody and in _pain_.

And, unfortunately, a moody Ringo was a snappy Ringo, and a snappy Ringo led to an _angry Shizune_.

"Just _deal with it!",_ she shouted, hands pressed firm against Ringo's side, coated in soft, blue-green medical chakra.

"I _am_ dealin' with it!" Ringo yelled back against the harsh strain of her throat, voice tremoring roughly, severely biting back the harshness of its delivery. " _You_ deal with it!"

Shizune was clearly ready to smack her if she kept being so resistant, but dammit, she was trying! It wasn't a fun thing and it'd been going on for _so damn long_. Ringo had completely lost track of time, but she'd readily believe the sun could come up at any moment with how long this seemed to take.

"Ain't it done yet!? How long's it been, eight hours!?"

Shizune growled back at her out of clenched teeth, trying to remain focused on the healing jutsu. "It hasn't even been thirty minutes! Aren't you tougher than this!?"

"Aren't you gonna lay off!?"

The glow from Shizune's hands dissipated with a frustrated huff, and for a moment Ringo feared she annoyed her doctor into leaving her to die. Fortunately, Shizune spoke up as she snatched a towel from her table setup to dab at her forehead, stomping towards the door with heavy, angry steps.

"You're going to need a lot of sessions like these, so get used to them! Now go to sleep! You've got another coming up tomorrow morning, and I am _not_ putting up with another like this!"

The door slammed shut behind her, and Ringo let out a breath she wasn't aware she'd been holding, coughing a few times from the feeling, then lightly rubbing a few fingers against her neck, trying to ease the pain. Yelling probably wasn't the best decision considering her throat still hurt like hell at the best of times, and everything she said was garbled anyways. Still...

'Thank Kami that's over...'

Suddenly she was just a bit thankful she'd been able to deal with injuries until now by just toughing them out, or regular bandaging and first aid. Healing ninjutsu always seemed so clean and cool, but it wasn't nice at all. Honestly, if it didn't save her so much time and if she didn't _require_ it, she'd be refusing every session. But, it _was_ required, and Shizune was right that she'd have to get used to them. She could complain about them after they were no longer absolutely necessary.

...That didn't mean she'd like it in the meantime, though.

Ringo nestled her head against the puffy hotel pillow, pulling the bed's soft linen blanket back over her.

'...aaaaah!' she groaned directly into the pillows fabric. That's so _good!_ How could she possibly stay moody when she was in a place like this!? Why was everything in Fire Country just so damn comfy!?

Maybe that was how everyone in Leaf got so soft. They spoiled themselves rotten. Maybe that's how they all got so weird, too...? As much as the water still skeeved her out around here, it could be that when the people here didn't have anything at all to worry about, they just did...whatever. Explored places nobody would think to explore. Think thoughts that should never be thunk.

'An interesting line of thought', she mildly noted. It had already started. She was becoming one of them.

She didn't even try to stop the shiver down her back at that.

Though that didn't explain the normality of Shizune. Tsunade...wouldn't be counted as completely normal, due to her gambling obsession despite her utter hopelessness with it. And her seeming love of the dramatic. There was no way that over the shoulder glare wasn't perfected by practice. You had to _try_ for that shit.

She forced herself to stop considering the Sannin's dramatic flair. For now she should probably just sleep. Doctor's orders after all, and rest was coming much easier than she expected, having just had her insides prowled through once again. It was either her exhaustion from the session, her lingering soreness and lack of energy from the surgery, or the bed she'd have literally killed to get if she was still in Kiri.

With the drowsiness overtaking her and no point in worrying about tomorrow, Ringo wrapped herself neatly in the bed's blankets and quickly drifted into a deep sleep, able to mostly ignore the lingering burn in her sides, and the scratching in her chest that surfaced with every small breath.

* * *

(Shizune)

She couldn't resist stomping towards her own room in the hotel, no matter the complaints she might receive or the neighboring hotel clients she might anger. She was just...just so _frustrated!_ Why did she have to deal with this for the next couple months!?

That girl was _impossible_. Never before has she seen someone so...so!...so _resistant_ to _basic medical practice_! Nobody else squirmed like that when they were being healed! Nobody else got that moody when they were _about_ to be healed! And though she'd gotten "that feels kinda funny" comments about diagnostic examinations, Ringo flailed about like it was _killing her._ Which, if it was, the diagnostic jutsu would show it, so that _was not_ the case.

'Maybe it's a cultural thing...?'

Shizune sighed. Ringo had likely never been under medical ninjutsu before, but that had been the case many times for her patients, and it was never _this_ bad. Though, to be fair, it was probably very much affected by the girl's condition. Something about it that made it feel weird, or pinch just a bit too much. Though the girl was still overly combative.

At least that meant it would ease as time went on.

... _hopefully_ it would ease as time went on. Oh Kami, if THAT was the lasting effect of her illness, that it would make her a _terrible_ patient, then-

...then at least she wouldn't need to deal with it after they left.

Sighing again, she resigned herself to the fact that Ringo was very likely just an astoundingly frustrating person. As for her condition, she'd see tomorrow. Another healing session, another diagnostic jutsu, and she should be able to gauge the path of Ringo's recovery properly. Until then, she should just work on getting sleep. She needed rest just as much as her patient did at this point.

Which is why, of course, upon entering her room, another headache greeted her.

"Mahhh Shizuneeee..."

Her ever astounding mentor laid flat on one of the beds, haori tossed over her face and sprawled out like a star. She was not in the mood to deal with this. Unfortunately, she didn't have it in her to leave it alone.

Taking a deep breath to calm herself, Shizune stepped sternly to the bedside, lifting her teacher's haori up. Tsunade scrunched up her face, whining out a small "whyyy" and drawing her arm over her eyes.

"Lady Tsunade. Have you been drinking?"

"Yes."

Yet again, she sighed. When her teacher seemed to swear off gambling in this area for now, she'd thought Tsunade would actually calm down entirely for a while. So far, however, it seemed that refusing to gamble only increased her _other_ vice in its place. Placing Tsunade's haori at the foot of the bed, she started searching for the sake bottle she knew had to be in here somewhere. Taking it away wouldn't stop her, but it would at least set a precedent.

"You should really take it easy on the sake.", she scolded. "We're going to be here for a good amount of time. It would probably be best to find something else to occupy you."

"But Shizuneeee, there's nothing else to dooooo..."

"Then look for something!" she snapped, "You're not spending the next two months drunk inside!"

Tsunade groaned, rolling over onto her side as Shizune rummaged around, finally finding and confiscating the bottle underneath the bed's pillows, and tucking it under an arm.

"Get some rest, and go outside tomorrow! I'll get you out there myself if I have to."

Her mentor _sulked like a five year old_ , lazily pulling one of the pillows over the side of her head and muttering, "This place really is bad luck..."

"You can deal with it. Now go to sleep, and find something better to do tomorrow."

Locking the bottle up on her side of the room, Shizune finally crawled into her own bed, drowning out the incessant mewling of her drunk teacher, rest only finding her thanks to the inexorable exhaustion brought from dealing with two whiny nuisances in need of her help.

When morning came, far too soon in Shizune's opinion, she hadn't rested nearly as much as she had been hoping to, but things had still started out marginally better than the day before. Without too much difficulty, she'd managed to kick Tsunade out of the hotel _and_ wrangled a resigned agreement from her to find something to do that _wasn't_ at a bar, to start.

And her _other_ ward, as she was beginning to realize, was...actually behaving herself. When Shizune had walked in with another tray of food, she was welcomed with groggy elation from the girl. Despite her nerves about this particular patient, it was still amusing to see something like that on the face of a person she'd only ever seen in bingo books and warnings before.

And when the healing started, though she was visibly uncomfortable with it still, Ringo seemed to be genuinely trying to keep from complaining. She let a few grumbles and an insult or two slip through, but Shizune paid it little mind, and fairly soon there weren't any vocal complaints at all. She was a bit more focused on the healing than she was on anything else at this point, but when she glanced up, she found her patient was watching her. Switching back and forth between the healing area and Shizune herself, in pain as she was.

If anything, it seemed like she was taking this seriously. Was she nervous? Shizune had told her that they'd talk more about her condition after a few more healing sessions and rest, and, well...that time was quickly approaching. It would probably make sense for her to be nervous if that was the case. She'd nearly forgotten her own nervousness at the prospect in the face of her frustration at dealing with her.

From what she could see so far...Ringo was healing well. At least, as well as could be hoped when everything in her chest and abdomen looked like they were clawed at by a wild animal. In terms of health, it was at least more or less a guarantee that she wouldn't die from her body's condition anymore. But Ringo seemed the type to want things to return to exactly as they had been as quickly as possible, strength included, and...honestly, that seemed impossible.

It wouldn't be certain until after the diagnostic session, but just from the healing it was easy to see potential long term effects. Besides that, a month or two of physical therapy, and if Ringo thought the disease was just gone from the surgery and healing then...well. That was yet another bit of news she wouldn't like.

That returning apprehension of telling her was what kept Shizune quiet through the healing and into the diagnostic jutsu, the soft glow around her hands passing across her patient's marred skin, still swollen and red from the surgery. Perhaps Ringo could tell that Shizune herself was nervous, and that was what was keeping her quiet as she tried not to squirm around under the jutsu.

...Shizune wondered how her mentor was faring.

* * *

(Tsunade)

"Now pinch here, and fold so the corners touch…"

Tsunade wordlessly made the fold in her little purple paper.

"And turn it overrrr!"

Turned it over…

"And open it!~"

Opened it.

"And there you go! You've made a butterfly!"

The kids around her gasped in oo's and ahh's as they flung their own little paper butterflies around the room.

A hand touched lightly against her shoulder; the origami teacher who had to be at least twenty years her junior was smiling happily at her.

"That looks great! I'm surprised this is the first time you've ever done paper folding!"

Tsunade stared blankly down at the little paper creation in her hand.

One thought occupied her mind entirely as the craft class' instructor walked off and prattled on to the kids around her.

'This is the most boring thing I've ever done.'

* * *

(Shizune)

'Her insides are a _mess_.'

Shizune couldn't help her grimace. Even with the advanced healing, it would still take weeks before Ringo's organs were back to any semblance of ok. They were...working, which was good, but...

She could probably try to get her sitting up by tomorrow, and maybe standing by the end of the week, thought walking unassisted wouldn't be good for her until another month or so of recovery.

And...lasting effects. From how things were looking, there would be quite a few. Thankfully nothing as serious as keeping her bedridden for the rest of her life, but definitely some things that would make any ninja more than a little upset. Some might even call for retirement.

...Shizune was going over the diagnosis just a bit slower than normal. She could call it being thorough, but dammit, she was scared of what she was going to have to say. No medic would ever want to tell their patient "this will never leave you".

And, though she was hesitant to admit it, she didn't dislike Ringo. She was annoying. She was a missing nin from a very scrutinized country. But Shizune had seen the girl try to flirt while on painkillers; it was hard to see her as just a fighting machine anymore. She served her meals and saw the sparkle in her eyes when she observed any of the comforts in the Land of Fire.

Shizune had seen the girl when she thought she was going to die.

In just a minute it would be time to break every bit of the news. Looking up at her once more, Shizune couldn't help but wonder what was going through the girl's mind right now keeping her quiet as she is.

* * *

(Ringo)

'Ow, ow, ow, ow, OW, f-dammit, kami- hhhhhh-'

At this point Ringo was almost ready to swear a vengeance against the medic who invented this jutsu. 'Diagnostic' her ass, this thing was torture in a pea green package. She could picture the inventor now, hunched over someone they despised, all "I swear it's for your health, seriously, very necessary", like a sadistic _madman_.

If Shizune didn't look so damn serious, Ringo would be cursing her head off right now. At least this was good practice for "getting used to it".

But...it _definitely_ wasn't her imagination that this was taking a long time. It was like Shizune was being...meticulous. That was the word. Maybe they were finally going to have 'the talk' about her condition. Ringo didn't delude herself into thinking she'd be up and out in perfect working order in a week or two, but the grim look on her doctor's face made it seem like she was still on death's door.

Which she wasn't.

...was...was she?

No, no she wasn't.

Sure, she still had coughing fits and spat up blood every now and then, and she still felt like she was on fire half the time, and her stomach would still twist and pinch like it was tearing in half. And she couldn't stand on her own. And her voice still sounded like it'd been fucked by a rock. And...

Oh fuck was she still going to die?

Oh- NOOooo no no she'd been through that journey already-

Ringo was starting to sweat, and not from the stress the diagnostic jutsu was putting on her.

Ok, ok, thinking about this rationally- If she was going to die, would Shizune still be treating her? No! Right? That's not how it worked, people who _will_ die didn't get treated. Right? Ok. Right. Maybe? So she's alive and it's going to stay that way. So what's her medic so damn worried about!?

Would she still be a ninja? This wasn't going to keep her down forever, was it?

Even if she's told it would she could tough it out, find a way to get herself up. Seven Swordsmen members don't drop that easy.

Right! Confidence was key, here. She wasn't nervous at all about whatever the god damn _hell_ was worrying Shizune so much.

In the midst of her confidence building, it seemed Shizune had finally finished her investigation into Ringo's condition. She was still quiet, not saying a word as she stood and fiddled with some things on her medical desk, only giving small, passing smiles every time she glanced back and met Ringo's eyes, every clink of glass and shuffling of paper only adding to her building anxiety.

After what seemed like another eternity, Shizune returned with a paper in hand, dragging her chair to the bedside and taking a deep breath.

...and then proceeded to just look around nervously. Ringo tapped her fingers against the bedsheets, watching her.

She took another deep breath, and it looked like she was forcing herself to talk now.

"Ok, so...Your condition."

"Yes."

"...First of all, some good news!", she cheered after some deliberation. This girl, as skilled as she was, didn't seem to have much experience with talking to her patients. At least she hoped that's what it was, and not just that she wasn't good at giving bad news.

"You'll live, so that's nice."

Somehow, that actually managed to take a bit of the tension from Ringo's shoulders. That was one fear gone, at least.

"Besides that, when we started, I expected you to take at least three months to be able to resume relatively normal activity. You're healing well! You could probably be working alright in a little over two!"

She seemed genuinely happy for a moment, and Ringo took the info in. That was good. Out early was great, but there had to be bad news next, right...?

"Now..."

Dammit.

"Even with you healing well, you'll still need a good deal of therapy. We can try to get you moving within the week, but we're going to have to be very careful still. And...as well as that…"

Sighing in aggravation, Shizune wrung her hands together nervously before abruptly dropping them to her lap, steeling her look. "...The way that disease affected you, some of your organs won't ever heal entirely." Before Ringo could even fully process what she'd just been told, Shizune continued, the dam on information having been broken through. "I'll tell you right now; you'll be relatively fine overall, but this will always give you problems, even if sporadically."

"You mentioned, earlier, the pain in your abdomen returned sometimes, yes? Along with the continuous burning sensation. Likely that will never fade completely, though it may ease somewhat. At various times, you may experience bouts of more intense feeling from the area. Coughing...your coughing fits are probably going to stay with you for a long time. They may stop eventually, but it's by no means a guaranteed thing. Your lungs are damaged, to put it simply, and they're very resistant to healing attempts right now."

Shizune sighed again, head hanging slightly. "Honestly, that seems like your biggest problem in recovery thus far. Your lungs and stomach were the worst off compared to everything else. Because of it, you may find yourself getting exhausted easier. Difficulty breathing is almost definite. It's very likely that it will take less exertion to tire yourself. The scratching you mentioned in your throat may also be somewhat permanent."

Ringo's stare lowered to the sheets of her bed, each sentence smacking into her like a solid punch. That was...a lot of things. Things to keep track of if she wanted to maintain her place as a kunoichi. This was a setback, but-

"Also...", Shizune continued, taking Ringo off guard.

Fuck.

"Your original doctor, whoever they were, weren't too far off the mark when they called this disease incurable."

That caught her attention. Angrily, she lifted her head once more, voice quieter and more strained than she'd have liked.

"...what?"

Shizune looked pained in apprehension at this part. That made two of them.

"Technically speaking," she began, "it's impossible to cure. You'll always have it." Her head hung lower as she continued. "Nobody, not even Lady Tsunade could get rid of it entirely. As for it being treatable...It can be..." she ventured, rolling her hand forward as she thought of the right word, "...suppressed, let's call it."

Her hands wrung over themselves again, unable to keep still as she continued her assessment.

"From this point forward I'm going to give you medication to be ingested daily to keep it inert, and stop it from spreading once again. I can make you as much as you need so long as you're here, and I can provide a recipe for it for whatever doctor you find afterwards, but..." Shizune trailed off, looking up from her paper to watch Ringo, likely gauging her reaction and waiting for some kind of response.

And Ringo...Didn't know how to react.

Overall...was that, really so bad? All of the major things were there. She'd live. She'd be able to fight, move, all that. But the lasting effects weren't...they weren't major, but they weren't _small_ things either. She breathed out, feeling the stressing scratch in her lungs (permanent scratching, apparently), trying to tie the list together in her head.

Lasting pain. Those bouts of a tearing feeling in her stomach. Coughing fits. Exhaustion. A pill a day for...for likely the rest of her life.

Overall, those weren't terrible. They weren't anything...overly debilitating, were they? But they still weren't...preferable. So should she be happy? Or...

What concerned her most as she thought through the situation was the pills. The idea alone that her illness would always be lurking within her, as if it was waiting, as if she were _prey_ , to be finished off when the time was right was...unnerving. It was terrifying. But, it wasn't only that. There was medicine to go with it; to keep it that way. She couldn't simply travel on a whim. She needed to keep close to properly trained doctors, who could make this medicine, who could watch her health with an illness such as this, and ensure her safety.

Doctor's like that didn't exist just anywhere in the world. Just like that, just after grasping it, her freedom was once more being stripped away.

This illness would act as a tether, keeping her leashed like an animal tied to a post, always within range of its master.

Her teeth gnashed together, grinding like stones.

"...alright..."

The words left her quietly, much more subdued than she'd intended, and the rage that had filled her just moments before dissipated under the gloom of it.

Ringo couldn't deal with things like this. She'd realized, soon after her initial anger when she'd learned of this illness. Fighting, active battle, heated arguments; those were all things she could power through like the kunoichi she was. This, however, was new ground; new territory, unexplored both literally and figuratively. An illness couldn't be fought, not how she liked to do it. The effects couldn't be so simply reversed. There was nothing to do but glower and accept what it gave like a cowed mutt. The truth of it was like a heavy blanket, wrapping her in bitter resignation.

"...alright." she muttered once more, struggling to sound put together despite speaking through a broken voice leaked from strained lungs. "I...understand. Thanks."

Shizune watched her sadly, picking up on the melancholy Ringo was utterly unable to wholly suppress. The pity pissed her off.

After a few moments, Shizune forced a smile, lightly clapping her hands in front of her, trying to sound at least somewhat cheery as she rose from her chair. "Well! You powered through the healing session quite well. You must be feeling hungry, right? It's about time to eat. How does that sound?"

Much to her disappointment, Ringo didn't respond, nor did she make any acknowledgement that she'd even heard Shizune speak aside from a slight downturn in the corners of her mouth, staring down at her hands, idly gripping and releasing her sheets as she busied herself in thought.

Sighing, Shizune excused herself from the room to prepare another meal. These next few months seemed to be trying times, both for her patient and herself.

Her return to the room was no different, Ringo staring out of the bedroom window, unmoving even as the tray was placed next to her. The only thing she received from the girl was a mild hum after informing her that she'd have another healing session. Trying to pry anything else was a hopeless endeavor, that only seemed to tense her more. Eventually, Shizune gave in to the fact that it was likely best to leave her alone for now, lest she simply make her angry enough to stress her condition.

A few hours later, however, it was only under the unwavering demand that she eat before the night's healing that Ringo so much as touched the plate before her, not mentioning the silence or the glares she'd send at her now and then, stopping herself from chastising every pained squirm the girl gave, and carefully ignoring the tears that escaped her patient midway through the night's healing session.

By the time it was over, Shizune barely had it in her to stand, leaving Ringo to her thoughts as she paced slowly down the hall to her own hotel room, twisting the knob and nudging the door open with her shoulder.

A quick shuffling from the rooms desk caught her eye, and she met the nervous glare of Tsunade, still awake, sat stiff in a mess of papers strewn about the area, many of which were crumpled into balls, and hiding something behind her back.

"...what are you doing...?" Shizune tiredly inquired.

"...nothing." Tsunade warily replied, shifting to keep whatever she was holding carefully hidden behind her.

Another bout of silence took over, and Shizune groaned, loud and long, burying her face in her hands as she threw herself face first onto the bed, screaming into her pillow until Tonton hopped onto the bed, lightly nudging at her side and oinking timidly.

Dealing with this was going to be far more draining than she'd initially thought.

She wasn't equipped to be a therapist. She was only barely convinced she was skilled enough to perform as a medic in this situation. Therapy regimens, keeping Ringo under control, _emotional_ support that she simply wasn't familiar with. This was too much. She'd taken on far too much here.

Sleep only found her after severals hours had passed in the quiet darkness of night, thoughts lingering on a patient that would need far more help than she'd been prepared to give.

* * *

AN: Aw damn. Ringo's got some Ringo emotions about this one.

Hey y'all. Sorry this took so long, lots of stuff has been going on, haven't had as much chances to write. Rest assured though, cause I'll tell you right now, **this fic _will not stop_ until i'm satisfied with how it's ending.** And that ending is still a very long ways away, even if it's going to take more time to get to than I'd have liked.

University started back up, and it's been occupying a lot of my time. Besides that, a lot of more personal stuff has happened, and I've had to take quite a bit of time recently for grieving purposes, so sorry if I'm a bit more...subdued, than I usually am.

I'm just trying to get back into the swing of things now. :) Things are getting better, so don't worry too much. Just keep havin' as good times as you can.

Thanks so much for reading everyone; next update should be at the end of february, then monthly, but I'll keep all the info on what's happening on my profile in case that doesn't quite work out like I'm expecting.

Snowboarding on the weekend, by the way! Finally getting some physical activity again! S'gonna feel good after not being able to make it to the gym for a while.

Reminds me, actually, any of you wonderful people watchin' the winter olympics? Chloe Kim, Mirai Nagasu, Liu Jiayu, goddamn I've been straight up amazed so far! Big big fan of those 3, and holy moly they've delivered some _powerful_ stuff.

Again, thanks so much for reading. This story means a lot to me, and it feels good to just be writing it again, even if I'm not the best at it lmao. I'm a history major, then an illustrator before I'm a writer. Just gotta keep goin, yknow? Do what feels good

See y'all the next update :D Take care!

xxx

 **Gtopia -** Ayyy thanks for reading! Yeah, making her new to the world outside of Mist was a rough decision, but in the end I decided it would just make for a better story if it was the case. It's a story of growth after all, and I didn't want to spend 30 chapters on the base of that growth. I guess I'm incorporating some things I just assume about her, such as her anger problems, her quick frustration, and other small bits like that. She's still young, still growing, strong as she is, and I really wanted to show that. Fairly easy to do since we know so little about her, but I can 100% get the frustration with it tho, no worries. Glad to see you're liking it so far :) As for crippling...well, she won't be in bed forever, but she's not escaping this unscathed. Growth is primarily made through adversity after all! And we do need some drama in this story. Don't worry tho, she'll still be fightin' through everything. Ringo ain't one to lay down and die. It's just a case of there's problems, and fighting against those problems.

 **Burkinator -** Yo! Thanks again for waiting through the pushbacks in updates, I know it was probably a lil' annoying. And, oh, my god, high ringo was a god damn _joy_ to write. Not very often you can get such a serious character like that with it still making sense, but I had a blast with that lmao. I researched SO MUCH on medical highs for that/ Also you can't tell her about her condition while she's high, she ain't gonna _remember_ nothin'! That'd just be bad medical practice :P Imagine Shizune shirking on responsibility by just getting people high and telling them then lol. I think that might be means to revoke a medical license. And yes, the Extra's are just things that happen, but I can't fit into base chapter. It's all canon, just consider it an added viewpoint of something that happened in the story. Still recommending Pyre btw ;P

 **Luizals -** Thank you! Appreciated, hope you can stick around!

 **125B -** I have no idea what this means, but thank you for reading! Slightly ominous reviews, lmao.


	10. Restoration: Part 4

"Do you want to try again?"

" _Yes_ ", Ringo snapped, hunched, sitting on the side of the hotel bed and far too obviously in pain. She grunted as she braced herself and tried once more to push herself up. Immediately, Shizune stepped forward, ready to aid however she could in getting her patient standing, only to be swatted away, just narrowly stepping back quick enough to evade Ringo's swinging hand.

"Don't touch me!", she ground out, voice rough like grout, teeth clenched and trying once more to push herself upwards. Quickly, her knees buckled beneath her and she landed back onto the mattress with a grunt of discomfort, followed by a growl of anger. "Dammit! Dammit, dammit, _dammit!"_

Shizune sighed, hands raised in a placating gesture to the angry girl in front of her.

It had only been a week of recovery. At this point Shizune had expected that Ringo might be able to stand with assistance, and maybe after another week of healing, on her own, though walking would still be out of the question. She'd sworn up and down that not only was that a remarkable timeframe considering the state of Ringo's body, but that she was healing better than expected overall.

Ringo, however, had started seeing thing differently.

As the days rolled on with only mild progress to show for it, her temper returned quickly, outpacing her health by far, every day in need of assistance only making the matter worse.

The girl's hands clutched at her abdomen, squeezing in an attempt to dull the pain along the still healing incisions.

"Ringo-san, please refrain from touching the healing areas! You're only going to lengthen your recovery this way!"

Her patient grumbled something under her breath, too quiet to hear, and very likely an insult, before trying to stand once more, only to fall forward to her knees, nearly collapsing entirely if not for Shizune moving forward to hook an arm under her shoulder.

"Don't touch m-", Ringo began coarsely yelling once more, only to break into another coughing fit, spattering blood on to the inside of her sleeve.

"Ringo-san, you need to calm down. Let me help you back onto the bed."

A moment passed as Ringo's cough subsided, and after a silent moment she roared gravilly, the back of her fist flying towards shizune in a swipe. Immediately, her wrist was caught in a vice grip, Shizune holding it firmly in place with her free hand. It was all Ringo could do to meet her glare, panting manically before Shizune spoke again with a tone of absolute finality.

"Get back onto the bed."

Ringo felt herself starting to break down. Both of her arms were immobilized; caught like a child throwing a tantrum who had dared to swing at their better. She couldn't even stand if she wanted to. Had she _ever_ been this weak?

She looked down, eyeing the floor, and still breathing heavily, making no further movements of resistance. Her doctor took what she could get, giving a small countdown before hoisting her up, Ringo struggling to provide what little energy she could to assist in the endeavor, and dropping back heavily onto the bed.

Shizune watched her for a moment, likely to ensure she didn't try to move once again. It was only after Ringo begrudgingly laid back once more that she backed off, breathing out heavily as she ran a hand through her hair.

"You're only going to make it worse if you push yourself like that. If you want to recover quicker, you absolutely _need_ to listen to what I tell you is and isn't okay."

Yet again, Ringo refused to respond. Same as the past few days, she's been difficult to work with, even moreso to get any compliant words from. Eventually, Shizune sighed, retreating to the far corner of the room, back to her desk to work on some medicinal ingredient sheet.

It wasn't until another five minutes had passed that Ringo had calmed enough to think without feeling furious.

This place was like a prison. There was no way to escape it, nothing that could be done but wait until her sentence was served. Caged like an animal, unable to free itself under its own weakness. Ringo was _weak_. It was enough to make her want to scream, even if it would only serve to worsen the pain in her throat.

She had to get out of here. Every day, every pill, every failed attempt to so much as _stand_ was going to drive her mad.

But what could she do? She couldn't walk, talking was a recipe for pain, and Shizune kept a watchful eye on every single thing she did.

A soft clink caught her attention, drawing her focus to Shizune's table. The medic had just set down a vial, filled with small tablets.

Ringo scowled.

Those pills _._ Without question the most damning result of her recovery. However long it might take, she'd walk again. She would fight again. But she would never shake off the damn _pills_.

She blew out her breath along with her frustration, running a hand through her hair. It was time to think, not...not...not do whatever the _hell_ she'd been doing! A whole week with virtually _no_ progress. When did she become so incompetent? When did she give up control of her life to someone else?

It wasn't when she was first diagnosed in Mist, no. Thinking back, it was in leaving Kiri that she could truly say she took matters into her own hands for the first time. Was it when she was searching? When she confronted Tsunade? Or...

When she arrived here. When Shizune _came for her_. When there was no other option, and it was all she could do but surrender herself to this. Her eyes narrowed at the realization. The very moment Shizune arrived, Ringo had lost everything. She'd given up. She was absolutely desperate, practically begging for the girl's help, pleading, crying, making _promises_...

Time passed and Ringo stewed in contemplating, doing her utmost to ignore Shizune's presence and shrugging off whatever questions she asks. Eventually, enough time had passed for the sun to begin setting, and for her doctor to bring another plate of food to her bedside.

Relenting to her hunger, Ringo ate in quiet solitude, Shizune having retired to her own hotel room for the night after mentioning something about her healing progress.

Ringo found herself deep in thought. Most of the past week had passed by in a haze; a blur of anger and burning pain, fuelling each other like a volatile dispute that only made Ringo suffer. This was the first time she was calm enough and her head clear enough to think rationally.

She'd been out of it this past week. She could concede that much. Uncooperative, angry, volatile...all true. She was _still_ angry. She needed better than this. She could argue with Shizune like a cornered animal all she wanted; it wouldn't do her any good other than leaving her exhausted and without progress. She needed _more_. She needed something better than this pathetic tug of war with the medic over her progress.

Ringo needed a plan. She had a fairly good track record with plans. She'd always been good at instinctual fighting, at thinking on her feet and coming up with tactics on the fly. This was, once again, uncharted territory, but it was one she could overcome, wasn't it? She'd dealt with worse, after all. The disease, the surgery, the damn _recovery_...So she could deal with a damn faux-hospital room, and she could sure as hell deal with Shizune. But what could she do?

Shizune held every card in the deck. The medicine, the healing jutsu, the extra hands for recovery that Ringo couldn't seem to do without no matter how hard she tried. Ringo held nothing. Though...something began to dawn on her, striking through her mind like buzzing lightning, screaming a solution in her ears.

Cards could change hands.

They did all the time; a valuable lesson that had to be learned in Mist if you wanted to keep strong. Slowly, a strange confidence began to fill her as she mulled over the different ways to go about this. She felt the grin on her lips, and a spark of fire coming to life in her eyes.

If she truly had surrendered her life to this medic, then fine. She was sick then. But now? Now she could take it back.

* * *

Ringo groaned as she woke. The morning sun still pained her, and she swore under her breath as her eyes slowly adjusted to the blinding light. In terms of rude wake-ups, she'd almost _prefer_ Fuguki's unannounced early morning training, if only because it was a _rare_ occurrence. The consistent and blaring cruelty of leaf village sunlight almost made her wish she never left Mist. Damn land of fire...

"Morning," someone spoke.

"Mm...?" Ringo squinted, tiredly trying to decipher the blurred shapes in front of her, veiled by the morning sun.

"Slept long enough? Honestly, how long did you stay up last night? You know you should be resting earlier, staying up won't-"

Ah. It's Shizune. Of course.

Ringo pressed her face back to her pillow, ignoring the veritable avalanche of nitpicks being thrown at her.

"Right, fine, ignore me," Shizune grumbled, setting down a plate of food and making her way to her desk. "Not like I'm trying to help you or anything, right? Right. Jeez..."

Ringo barely resisted the urge to scream her lungs out. Shizune just got harder and harder to drown out every day, didn't she?

'At least the food is good', Ringo bitterly thought, turning her head to look at the plate. Rice, beans, and _fruit_. She'll never begrudge the land of fire's fruit. With a quick glance to ensure Shizune's back was turned, she grabbed at the plate quietly ate.

There was a routine to this; Shizune liked her structure. Food, healing, a couple hours where the medic left so she wouldn't have to put up with Ringo for a while, physical therapy, more food, more healing, more therapy. It was a routine she knew well, since there wasn't much to do but lay and listen to her doctor work.

But today would be different. Ringo had spent most of last night thinking it over.

She had to get out of here. Staying would drive her crazy. So...all she had to do was make _use_ of the things here while she could.

Her gaze drifted to her medic. The cardholder. She sighed, running her hand lightly across her stitches. If she was going to do this, she might as well start now...

"Shizune..." she ground out, catching her doctor's attention. The scrutinizing look she received told her clearly what the medic expected; Ringo hadn't spoken unprompted without including an insult at all in the past week. It always ended with Shizune chiding her about overusing her voice while her throat was still healing.

"What is it?"

"Help me stand."

"...you _want_ my help?" Shizune blandly asked, obviously doubtful.

"Yes."

"...and you won't argue."

"No."

"You won't struggle? Or overexert yourself, or throw a fit, or-"

"No!" Ringo nearly shouted, interrupting Shizune's line of questions and fighting back the urge to cough. "Now...help me!"

For a moment, Shizune didn't move, judging how serious Ringo was. Eventually, she relented, sighing and standing up, stepping to the bedside.

"Alright. Fine. But if I think you're getting exhausted, you stop. Got it?"

"Yeah, alright, sure..." Ringo said, ignoring the way her medic rolled her eyes at the response. She sat up as much as she could, grabbing at Shizune's offered arm and hooking it under her shoulder.

"Remember, this is just an exercise for your body. The goal isn't to walk, it's just-"

"Alright!" She interrupted. "I got it, I understand, let's go!"

Shizune began the countdown with a huff, pulling upwards. Ringo rose, grunting, onto shakey feet, stumbling against Shizune's chest. She was leaning, heavily, onto her caretaker, and before now this is where she would fall, pushing away.

This time was different. She clutched the fabric of the medic's sleeves, trying to hold herself steady. Her breathing was haggered, but as Shizune readjusted her hold, Ringo's legs shook less. Moments passed, the only sound in the room that of Ringo's pained grunts as she steadied herself against her helper.

Ringo stayed standing.

Shizune's queries about how she felt were drowned out by the realization that finally, after _so long_ , after _so much_ , she could stand again. She could overlook that she was only capable of this with help, because it was _something_ , when all previous attempts had given her nothing. This was progress.

The thought brought a smirk to her lips.

* * *

Shizune sighed, pressing her face to her bed and groaning. She'd dealt with a lot under Tsunade's tutelage; so much so that she thought herself ready for anything.

She was WRONG.

When she first took on Ringo's case, she was certain the worst of it had passed after the surgery. That night was a nightmare, and everything had seemed to come under control when it had finally passed. Even Ringo herself seemed happier! And then came the week of healing. Her patience had been worn through, then, but eventually Ringo settled herself. The girl pushed through her fears of what the recovery would mean, pushed through the pain she felt during healing sessions, and, eventually, pushed through that damn ego that had been holding her back. So why? Why was it turning out like this not even a week after she could stand again?

Why had Ringo become such an _asshole!?_

The consistent, unending demands and criticisms from her patient were going to drive her mad. Every single thing she did was met with difficulty of some sort, no matter what it was.

'The foods not good enough!' 'You're being too loud!' 'Can't you do better than that?'

Kami's sake, she'd thought a throat injury that made talking painful would _dissuade_ nagging to this degree, not _encourage_ it! And if there wasn't any problem? It was like Ringo would _make one up_ just to have something to complain about! And whenever Shizune started getting frustrated, that girl would get this smirk on her face like she was enjoying every last moment of whatever irritation she could cause. What happened to make her this way!? What was her PROBLEM!?

"Oink!"

Tonton's tiny feet padded across Shizune's back, walking to her head and nudging against her neck.

"...Ton _tonnnnnn!_ " Shizune groaned, flipping herself over and up and collecting the little piglet into her arms, pulling the squealing baby to her chest and snuggling her. The tiny thing calmed down quick, nuzzling into her neck. "At least you're here for me..."

And wasn't that a thought! Where the hell was Lady Tsunade!? When Shizune had initially kicked her out of the Hotel, it was so that she would do _something_ besides sit and brood. She found a nice little class, and sent her off. As it turned out, she never had kick Lady Tsunade out again. Very quickly, that hour a day outside turned into two hours. Then three. Then five. And now? Now Shizune wasn't even sure when she would see her mentor anymore. What had Tsunade found to do that could keep her entertained that long?

...Shizune should probably look into that. No doubt it was something horribly unhealthy. Tsunade had been acting...secretive...lately.

"Ugh..." she whined, laying down onto her back and idly scratching behind Tonton's ears. "I have a difficult patient. My sensei's no better. The two of them are going to drive me crazy, and I still have about a month and a half of healing left before Ringo's fully recovered." She groaned, grabbing ahold of the little piglet and lifting her into the air. "What do I do, Tonton...?"

"Oink!"

"Yeah..." she sighed, setting the piglet back down on her chest. "That's what I thought...What do you think's wrong with her, anyways?" she ponders, staring up at the ceiling. "What happened to get her so...so..."

"Oink."

"Tonton, don't say that about her."

"Oink!"

Shizune's stare dropped down to her little piglet. Was it sad to pretend your pet was talking to you? Was that a thing that lonely people did?

"Oink, oink..."

"I mean, that's a possibility, but..."

Whatever. Shizune had met many people who dealt with stress in _much_ worse ways than this.

"Oink."

"Hah...born that way..."

Shizune's eyes widened.

"Ringo was born that way...?"

The startling thought that perhaps, just maybe, this was how Ringo _actually was_ struck her mind like a gong. When her life wasn't in danger and she was sound of mind, perhaps she was just an inexplicably unpleasant person. Mist would likely have encouraged such attitudes, wouldn't it? It wasn't _impossible_ to say that Ringo was only nice to be around when she was quite literally too weak to be anything else. But Ringo was part of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, wasn't she? A junior member, if the reports were correct. There's no way an attitude like this would've been tolerated there, right? Unless she just annoyed them into leaving her alone; a skill she seemed quite talented in right now.

...That Ringo might be the worst personality in _Kiri_ was a thought as terrifying as it was entertaining.

Shizune spent a silent moment praying that Ringo wasn't actually as terrible as she was starting to seem. As domestically entertaining as the implications of Ringo's assholery were, there was more to it. Shizune had only healed Ringo on the promise that she wouldn't harm anyone in the Land of Fire. What if she just...lied? What if a lie such as that was no big deal to her?

What would Shizune have to do then...?

She closed her eyes, trying to will away her growing headache. Shizune had a long road ahead of her still...

* * *

Ringo was in a good mood. She laid her head back against the grass, feeling the sun on her skin, running her fingertips across the dirt. Her eyes closed, and she let herself bask, for once, in the powerful sun of the region. It felt so _good_ to be outside again! She might even come to _like_ Land of Fire sun if _this_ is how it could feel...

The weeks after her successful standing attempt had treated her well. Currently, with a month of healing and therapy, she could walk. She could walk _unsupervised_ , making her way out of the hotel to the roadside clearing. Her health was far from perfect; Shizune made sure to remind her as much at every opportunity, but she could feel her faded strength returning little by little, even if her breathing still felt a bit shallow compared to what she remembered.

It was something to get used to. She knew she could.

The click of wooden sandals snapped her out of her musings, slowly opening her eyes to reveal Shizune, standing right above her, crossed arms and angry frown.

Everyday Shizune.

"So _this_ is where you got to, huh?"

"So it would seem." Ringo smirked. Not even the rough grating in her throat when she spoke could keep her from these little annoyances. The medic's exasperation was the only real entertainment she had here.

Shizune didn't look amused. "I've told you, you can't do things like this. You incisions might be mostly healed, but that doesn't mean it's no risk! What if you collapsed out here?"

"I'm fine."

"Are you?" Shizune persisted. "Can you even stand up on your own?"

"Yes," Ringo answered immediately. Without even an attempt, she amended it; "Maybe. Probably."

Shizune dropped her face in her hands. Ringo chuckled, thinking how it looked as if her doctor was about to scream.

"...Let's get you up," Shizune sighs, dropping to her knees by Ringo's shoulder. "And then you need actual _bed_ rest. In a bed."

"Yeah sure. Help me up now."

The angry twitch of Shizune's eye was just nearly enough to make her burst out laughing.

* * *

Oddly enough, she felt pensive. She was just as excited as she expected; the sun had set and Shizune had left for her own room, but now that this was upon her it felt...larger than she had thought. Enough to make her nervous.

Maybe it was her morals. What a bizarre thought _that_ was.

Shizune _had_ taken care of her; she had truly saved her life, and Ringo was about to do a bit more than piss her off. Perhaps Ringo _did_ owe her a life debt, but she couldn't stay here for another month like the medic wanted, and it's not like she promised to _stay_ …

She was VERY careful not to make any more promises.

With a groan, Ringo pushed herself off the bed, standing still for a moment to quell the dizziness that still swirled in her head when she moved too quickly. A moment passed, and she took a deep breath, flexing her hands and rolling her shoulders.

The night was oddly silent; normally the cricket's keep her from sleeping easy, but tonight the world felt drowned out, snuffed beneath the weight of her next choice. She moved methodically, kicking the Kiba up into her hands and tying them secure to her sash.

She couldn't keep from smiling; the familiar weight at her sides struck through her like the lightning they made, and all at once every trace of doubt she held was dashed from her mind. This felt _good._ This felt right. She needed out, and she could get it now, in the breaks of Shizune's watch.

The medic's table in the corner of Ringo's room was organized as always, and Ringo found herself incredibly thankful, since it meant a bit of familiarity. Watching your doctor muck with a set of medical supplies for a month can give you an idea of what goes on in it, and she needed a couple things before she could leave…

It only took a moment of rooting through the desk's scattered supplies. Two small vials, containing the pills now affixed to her permanently. And underneath those…

The recipe. In many ways, this was even more important. She couldn't hope to make sense of it, true, but that she'd have it...a doctor. Any doctor worth their training could do something with this. She could keep to the outskirts; flit about the mainland while avoiding the major villages.

But she could leave the thinking until she got far enough away from Shizune to stop fearing the woman's potential divine retribution. Tucking the viles and paper to the fold in her robe, she turned to the door.

It was more difficult to walk quietly than she remembered; her steps felt heavier than they should be still, and every breath she took resulted in a barely audible wheeze. It was to her great relief that the stairs didn't squeak. If Shizune caught her, she could play it off, probably...but that would be pushing her luck. Somehow, even after proving to herself that she could make it outside unbothered, Shizune was leaving her unattended all through the night. She'd take that chance while she had it.

Peering around the corner to the entrance revealed...the desk girl, asleep, head dropped heavy in her arms. She was snoring.

They should honestly pay her less.

Though she knew she had little to fear here, her heart was beating fast. Technically speaking, this was her first time in action since fleeing Kiri. Sure, this was a _hotel_ , but...she _was_ still evading a Sannin-trained shinobi in the process.

Still, as the door clicked shut behind her, she felt a burst of adrenaline course through her.

This was HER life.

No more laying around. She was stronger, now. She tamed her illness, and she could fight it as long as she needed to.

Nothing could hold her back. There was a whole world out there; a world beyond the Mist just waiting to be discovered, her legacy waiting to be carved across the earth.

She prepared herself, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes; however much she could push through, she knew this was still going to be painful. Her weapons were tied secure, and her clothing cleaned and sewed (perhaps she should thank Shizune for that as well if she ever saw her again...she sincerely hoped, however, that she would never see Shizune again).

She stepped forward into the cold night air, shaking her legs. Another deep breath, and once more, by the light of the moon, Ringo ran.

* * *

AN: Hey dudes! Your fav lesbian's back at it again with another goddamn naruto chapter!

Holy shit y'all, a lots happened since last chapter, huh? TDOV, easter, i made my course schedule for next semester, day, the equinox, essay after essay after essay, etc etc etc. Lots of good good shit. Hope you all had a good time. Can you believe it's still snowing here? End of April and we're still getting snowstorms in Philly.

NOW! Let's talk Naruto like the nerds we are: Oh damn Ringo ditched! Yep. Oddly enough, I never planned for anything like this to happen at first. This chapter's been completely rewritten, twice. One of my biggest problems as a writer is that I have a very bad tendency to have everything settle into this perfect land where everyone is happy and gay and nothing bad ever happens.

Now there are places for that kind of writing...this story is not one of those places. The original chapter, when i really took a look at it, was boring as hell. It just glided by with absolutely nothing happening; everything was resolved immediately and without problem, and Shizune and Ringo separated on fantastic terms. Sure as hell couldn't leave it like that.

So I thought, "well how could i POSSIBLY have conflict here…?"

Then I remembered. Ringo's still an asshole! In fact, not only is she an asshole, she's an asshole who nearly died 4 times in a week, felt her life draining away from her, went through surgery while awake, is currently in a foreign country, and is having her life ripped out from under her feet as bits of her are pulled to pieces never to be returned, and has completely lost control of everything around her. There's...quite a lot of ways conflict can be established.

Ringo's still Ringo, basically. That's the change I made, lmao.

Honestly, I'm STILL not quite happy with this chapter, but at this point i really just needed to get it out and get to a new point in the story. Restoration is now complete! Time to move forward. Also, this chapter broke 50k for the fic! That's pretty damn neat.

So! Ringo's on the lam. Where will she go? Shit dude, i have no idea. Guess I gotta write it.

See you all next chapter! Thanks for reading!


	11. The Wandering Mist: Part 1

Ringo's legs burned with exertion beyond anything she'd felt before, shaking under pressure she knew Shizune would have killed her for putting on them.

The knowledge that if Shizune found her then Ringo would likely be dead anyways didn't really help.

Finally, she felt herself give out, knees buckling as she slowed, planting a hand on the grassy dirt and lowering herself to the ground. Slowly, painfully, she drudged herself over against one of the forest's trees, leaning back onto it as she struggled to keep her breathing under control, every breath a small wheeze. For all that she'd run, she still had a _long_ ways to go before she'd reach the border, and the damn trees were starting to get to her. Fire country was much bigger than it had any right to be.

Ringo snaked her hand into the front of her gi, pressing against her side trying to alleviate some of the goddamn _burning_ in her abdomen and why did it still _burn-_

She knew she wasn't done with her recuperation; Shizune had told her that much, and she could figure it out herself by virtue of how she could still feel her guts fucking up just from running. There was also how much her lungs burned and begged for her to stop after just the first mile, and what the hell was with everything in her body burning lately!? And now the way her head swam, and her vision doubled and- oh fuck not again-

Ringo fell to her elbow, grunting at the impact, dry heaving over the grass, having nothing left in her stomach to empty. The heaves turned very quickly into painful wet coughs, blood and bile sticking in her throat, forcing her to hack and spit out what she could onto the ground.

When the heaving finally subsided- just in time, as the arm she was using to support herself felt like it was going to give any moment - Ringo let herself fall to her back, wiping some of the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve.

For a moment, she was content to just lie there and bask in the coolness that was so rare in Fire territory, reveling in the small break, but when she opened her eyes and saw the faint tinge of orange creeping into the sky above her, she was struck with worry about a routine she'd forced herself to remember.

Shizune would be waking up soon.

"Goddamn..." she groaned, trying to quell her exhaustion. She was at least glad she wouldn't be there when Shizune came to check her room.

A shiver ran down her spine at the thought.

Ringo honestly had no idea exactly how far she'd gotten, but there was no way she'd been traveling as fast as she used to, not with another month or so of recovery scheduled. As well, something that was driving her nerves up the wall was that she was clueless as to how fast Shizune or Tsunade _could_ be, and goddammit, she was really hoping she wouldn't have to find that one out, which meant running like hell and _hoping_ they wouldn't catch up. Ringo didn't even know if they _would_ follow after her, but there was no room for taking chances when it came to her life anymore. She worked too damn hard just to keep it for her to lose it all over something as stupid as that.

Besides, if she could make it to the north-eastern border, then even if the medics _were_ following her, they'd be unlikely to go any further. Ringo would be out of Fire country, and into the Land of Hot Water; not too small, not too big, a fair medicine program if not a particularly good one, and _decidedly_ neutral about most everything.

Besides. She'd always wanted to try a hot spring.

As her breath started to steady, the irony finally hit her. She was fleeing for her life from the medics she'd just spent ages trying desperately to find.

Juzo would've thought that was absolutely hilarious.

Ringo took in a deep breath and slowly let it out in a sigh, feeling somewhat steadied after her night of running. Her hand made its way back into her gi, pressing lightly against her incision scar. That was far too quickly becoming a habit, but she'd found that a bit of pressure on her side eased the lingering surgical pains just a bit, and a small body tic was more than worth the relief it brought.

"...dammit!" She strained to yell into the empty forest, "Why can't this be easier, huh!?" She'd had enough stress lately! When was everything gonna settle down!? The illness, the chase, the _partial_ recovery, the worrying about Kiri searching for her...

And that. That was something she held no illusions about- Kiri was almost definitely after her. Ringo knew her country was falling apart at the seams, but not many had actually gotten the balls to run just yet. So one of their finest, from the pride and joy of Mist's military, deserting now?

She didn't have an updated Bingo Book to look at, but she was fairly certain she'd be able to find her face in one.

She'd even stayed away from the coast on this trip just to keep as far away from Mist's reach as possible, betting they wouldn't be willing to move any forces beyond the coastline of Fire Country for fear of sparking a larger conflict.

But now? Now she was moving out of the Land of Fire, no allies, no supplies, too many enemies, and _too much goddamn_ _stress_.

Ringo let another minute pass in blissful silence, savoring the bit of time she had where her insides _didn't_ feel like they were trying to eat her. Again. Soon, however, another realization of what the rising sun meant dawned on her.

"Morning, huh...?" The hand in her gi grabbed at the small vile she'd stashed away in the folds of her clothing, drawing it out so she could see it.

Daily pills. She relentingly twisted the thing open, picking out a pill and dropping it into her mouth, grimacing at the taste before swallowing it down.

Ugh. Like chalky toothpaste that's been left out in the sun.

This was her life now. No more land of water. Now the land of fire was being left behind too, apparently. That one was actually a bit of a shame; the food was really good around here, and there was an _overabundance_ of luxury. If Ringo hadn't pissed off one of the sannin and her apprentice just because she'd gotten a bit stir crazy, she might have been tempted to stay.

Well. The future was still up in the air, anyways. Who even freaking knew anymore?

Ringo sat up with a grunt, stashing the pills back into her clothes.

Her five minutes of rest were up. Time to get moving once more.

* * *

The man was tired. Exhausted even, drained from months of effort with near nothing to show, and it was increasingly obvious how fed up with this mission the rest of his comrades were becoming. For a couple weeks, they'd even considered recalling most of their force until they received some kind of word, but in the end all they could do was send their best tracker inland and wait.

Which was why he was relishing in the nap he was currently giving in to, resting on a branch of one of the thousands of trees Fire country offered, arms behind his head as he basked in the morning sun.

"Hey," a voice called out from below him, breaking him from his reverie. "Get up. We're moving."

"Whaaat...?" He said, rolling onto his stomach to look down, seeing his masked ally. "Why? It's not like-"

"We have a lead. Torakkā sent a message."

He paused, momentarily stunned. "Seriously? No way. That bastard actually _found_ her?"

"Found and following. She's begun moving, towards the northern border."

"So she _is_ still alive..." He muttered, actually surprised, before turning back to the other man. "And he can stick to her?"

He could almost feel the smirk beneath the man's mask. "She's bleeding."

Oof. Blood, huh? If she was leaving any kind of blood trail, there was no way Torakkā _wouldn't_ be able to keep on her. Looks like their little hunt had finally bore fruit.

"Get the others," the man below him ordered before turning, "We're leaving immediately."

"Yeah, yeah, alright," he replied, making sure his own mask was in place and securing his swords to his back.

"Ameyuri Ringo..." He smiled, chuckling to himself. "Your funeral...will be interesting."

* * *

AN: Short chapter this time, and it's actually on purpose!

Here's the deal - I have a summer class out of the country. It's gonna be about 3 weeks with _no_ time to write at all. Now, I have more than just this written out right now, but not quite enough for a big update before I leave, so I shaved this off the rest of the chapter, fixed it up a bit, and made it part 1, because I really didn't wanna leave you all for 2 months with nothing again.

I'll be back towards the end of june, and have the next chapter up within/around 2 weeks after that.

Hope y'all are having a good summer, and I'll see you soon!

Vermiss mich nicht zu sehr! ;P


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